This morning I woke up feeling the same things I feel most days. There are the life-stealing feeling, like fear surrounding my health and unknown future, all the questions, how’s, what-ifs and regret. Then come prayers, thankfulness, hopefulness, healing and grace, followed by more prayers that the knowledge of what God has already done in my life outshine the dark, joy-stealing, thoughts. And even though the clouds come back around sometimes, God’s love and mercy out shine the darkness. 

The “beast” of cancer was on intimidation overdrive this morning and God kindly reminded me of the story of David and Goliath in 1 Samuel 17. Who was David that he should stand up against this giant, beast of a man-destroyer? Nobody. He was a youngest son, a regular guy, who was also probably pretty good at keeping an eye on sheep, since that was his day (and night) job. That’s it, folks. He couldn’t even wear the armor they tried to put on him to help protect him while fighting the giant beast. What chance did he have in this fight? Slim at best, but probably closer to zero, at least that’s what everyone thought. 

So the big fight comes, and after Goliath basically says he is going to rip David from limb to limb and feed him to the animals in his scariest giant voice, David says in vs. 42-46, “You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the LORD ALMIGHTY, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day the Lord will hand you over to me, and I will strike you down and cut off your head.“ David is not kidding around here. Then in vs. 47 David pulls the mightiest weapon possible, “All those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or spear that the Lord saves; for the battle is the Lord’s, and he will give all of you into our hands.”

I know David sounds all confident and fully assured, but he had to have some amount of fear. You don’t go into battle with nothing but a slingshot and a God you can’t even physically see next to you and not feel SOME amount of fear. (Or maybe I’m just projecting…)
I guess that is what impacted me—it seems to me that David was a regular person, who probably had regular person feelings, and he stood confidently in the face of almost certain defeat declaring faith and victory because of who God says He is. And that was more than enough. Spoiler alert, David flies the W.

I am no biblical scholar, and clearly the story of David and Goliath is technically not about “cancer”, more like biblical times turf wars and important stuff like that, but it encouraged me today. 

I know October is a month promoting “awareness” but I was thinking maybe we could instead challenge ourselves to be aware that we all have “goliaths” in our lives; they are just called something different. And if you really want to help people with breast cancer this month maybe just buy them a bunch of organic, green, broccoli. That would be super helpful and healing. 

xoxo