“All the glory is due you! You are the Holy One! You’re the One, You’re the only One!”

I listen as my family and I sing these words. We sit together as one unit, one band of people suffering through a tragic loss; if you only knew what we had been through. You wouldn’t believe it if you could hear us singing these words with all of our hearts. You wouldn’t believe that just a little over a month ago, we lost one of our family members to cancer. A little girl, we loved her without measure and now she is gone. We are upset and we do struggle through life sometimes. However, you would never believe it if you could hear us now. We hold our heads high as we show God that we trust His judgment. “You’re the One, You’re the only One!” We know it, we believe it, and we sing it with pride… together.

Chelsea Chaney is a 17 year old Christian who loves God and Christ.  She is a leader and inspiration to her family and friends.  In addition to being active in the church, she is the captain of the high school varsity cheer squad, senior class president, student council president, book club president, and publicist for the Spanish club.

And my daughter…

He was so proud of it.  The lines were right, the joints fitted, the wood finished to a glow.  The boat drafted better than any other and its beauty inspired use.  He could remember it now looking at the vessel before him.  Where had the beauty gone?  The years had worn it so slowly he hadn’t even noticed.  Now weathered, dull and leaking, the boat’s original beauty was only a faint remembrance…

Growing up in the church a lot of time was spent on two categories of sin, namely sins of commission, those things God tells us not to do but we do anyway, and sins of omission or those things God tells us to do but we ignore.  These are important categories but with a warning:  if we focus on a checklist of things we should and should not do, we by our nature grow to rely on OUR goodness and not on God’s.  Jesus clearly stated over and over that his disciples would become children of God and be consumed with a relationship with God through him.

Jesus replied: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ Matthew 22:37(NIV)

How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! John 3:1(NIV)

Over and over the Word of God explains Christians are about relationship not rules.  Our obedience (omitted and committed) is because we love God and value His presence in our lives.  We want to please Him.  Because of this, I believe there is a far more dangerous category of sin, attrition.  Attrition is any activity that causes a slow drift away from our relationship with God.  The dangerous thing is that it can take the form of just about anything, including religion.  Sometimes seemingly harmless activities over a lifetime (or less!) lead us to a point we are separated from God and don’t even recognize it until it’s too late.

We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away. Hebrews 2:1 (NIV)

What is the measure of a man? What is it that he calls upon down deep inside when desperate times come? Heroes are sometimes found in shooting wars and sometimes in wars of another kind.

For the past year my granddaughter Sierra, has fought cancer. January brought news that she was suffering from osteo sarcoma in her right knee. This is a tumor attached to the bone. Chemo, titanium inplant, more chemo, cancer recurrence in the calf of her leg, amputation of the right leg above the knee, another surgery for recurrence in a lung and now extended treatment with a new protocol to improve her immune system is a summary of her year with terror, seven operations and numerous biopsies!

It’s 2009 and she’s back in school, looking forward to getting a prosthesis on what she now affectionately calls her “little leg”. We’ve been in three hospitals as well as a consultation in another. We have met many “battle buddies” along the way, and what a blessing that has been. We have seen grace and courage in people thrown almost overnight into a nightmare they could never have imagined, a nightmare not to be awakened from, but one awakened into, over and over and over.

Cancer is a thief, a robber of time, money and most of all, normalcy. Normal is good. Boring is good. But in the wild and terrifying roller coaster ride where Mr. Cancer takes away a person’s buttons and bows, there stands another MAN. He’s the guy that stays the course, doesn’t run from the unthinkable and remains true to what he vowed, “in sickness and in health.” He’s the man holding his wife up when she’s almost beaten, cancer tired. He’s the dad that holds his wife up when their baby is sick unto death. He’s the hero of Cancerland and somewhere they’re making his medal of honor, his badge of courage. These men are described, I hope, in a poem I wrote some time ago and is in my book, ” POEMS BY LOU DAVID ALLEN”

My Prince Charming
Is not the richest,
Nor the smartest,
Nor the most handsome,
But when I’m sixty three
He will still love me
And put a diamond on my hand.
And should our babies be
Sick, even unto death,
He will pray God takes him
And not them.
That’s who my Prince Charming is.

Guest author David Allen has a B.S. degree in Physics and an MBA.  He has been an elder in the church, engineer, teacher, junior college administrator, mayor and a salesman.  For more information about his book of poerty contact David at dallen@camalott.com