"God is the Healer"

I recently shared about Raphael's leukemia returning and the small chance of his survival. Well, yesterday I received an email from him telling me to read his journal and this is what it said:

December 1st, 2005

Last Thursday and today are days of great news. This afternoon, my doctor called me to let me know that there is no more leukemia in my spinal fluid as he performed a spinal tap yesterday. As for last Thursday, this is what I wrote when I learned the news – I just wanted to wait for today’s results before posting it :

Thanksgiving 2005 (Nov. 24th), Paris, 3:30pm

Today is and will remain a special day in my heart, a true day of Thanksgiving. I was told by my doctor that my bone marrow is leukemia free. This is of course quite a shock to hear such news after almost nine months of disease and trials. But trials turn to gold by the grace of God. This God that I write about since March set me free twice now. He gave me salvation a few years ago, and today He gives me another kind of salvation, a physical one. Scientifically, there is no reason for leukemia to go away. But I guess today is time for me to walk out of the furnace, and I think for many more years. How can I ever be scared with a God like Him ? How can I ever fear leaving this life when I know with assurance that I’ll be with Him as soon as I’ll leave this earthly life ? And to make sure I would never think that it’s thanks to my own efforts that my leukemia left, He made me relapse last September, maybe just to show me that it’s neither the medication nor the doctors that heal, but that He is the healer.
I hope this story can serve as a testimony to all that He lives. And I hope all can see that the mystery of this life – that I was writing about on March 24th in this very journal – is to simply surrender our life to Him.
I am thankful to have you as my friends. I will never be able to thank you enough for all that you did and still do for me. I’ll write more in the next days and weeks. I give you my love.
Rapha-El (“God is the healer”)

I know that you can't experience the same emotions I did when I read that, but I was jumping around my apartment and praising God. I'm not usually the type who cries when they're happy, but I started laughing and then weeping over the goodness of God. I know he doesn't always heal, I've experienced much disappointment, but ever since I found out about Raphael's leukemia I knew God wanted me to pray for him with the promise that he would be healed. I'm just ashamed at my lack of faith that it would actually happen! But it has.... so praise him!

Raphael (center) with his brothers in Paris

C.S. Lewis Rocks

I have just finished reading "Mere Christianity" by C.S. Lewis and I wanted to share a quote that I loved from the book.

The terrible thing, the almost impossible thing, is to hand over your whole self - all your wishes and precautions - to Christ. But it is far easier than what we are all trying to do instead. For what we are trying to do is to remain what we call "ourselves," to keep personal happiness as our great aim in life, and yet at the same time be "good." We are all trying to let our mind and heart go their own way -centered on money or pleasure or ambition - and hoping, in spite of this, to behave honestly and chastely and humbly. And that is exactly what Christ warned us you could not do. As he said, a thistle cannot produve figs. If I am a field that contains nothing but grass-seed, I cannot produce wheat...If I want to produce wheat, the change must go deeper than the surface. I must be ploughed up and re-sown. (from the chapter "Is Christianity Hard or Easy?")

I know that many times I like to think that my good actions are who I am, but I know deep inside I'd rather be watching television than doing service in my community. Therefore, I know it will be hard to give myself to Christ, but as he changes me from the inside, my outward actions will reflect his life in mine. What a glorious, difficult task.