Daily Seasonal Reflections
Friday of the Third Week of Advent
Fr. Trey Nelson
 
“The Lord spoke to Ahaz: ‘Ask for a sign from the Lord, your God; let it be deep as the nether world, or high as the sky!’ But Ahaz answered, ‘I will not ask! I will not tempt the Lord!"” (From Isaiah 7:10-14)
 
I want to share with you an experience I had while I was undergoing chemotherapy and radiation treatments for cancer 20 years ago.  I have only shared this with a few people, because it may sound a little crazy.  I stayed with our mother throughout the entire 7 months.   One week, I found myself in the midst of the worst, most excruciating pain I had ever experienced in my entire life. It was one of the side effects from the chemotherapy protocol.  I do not want to go into too much detail. I will simply say that for several days, it was as if the entire inside of my mouth was on fire. I have never felt pain that bad, before or since that week.  It was recommended that I drink lidocaine, in hopes that it would numb the pain.  That did not work. At the same time, one of my physicians called in a prescription for some other liquid medicine.  That did not work either.  One Saturday evening, I was just sitting there on the sofa.  My Mom was worried, because there was nothing she could say or do to ease the physical or emotional pain.  Now, here’s the part I have only shared with a few people.  It was about 8:00pm. I got up, went to my room, and knelt down on the floor beside my bed.  I had not done that since I was a child.  The pain was so bad, I could barely speak.  Still, I spoke out-loud, “I’m not asking you to take it away. I’m just asking that you help me to know that it will eventually get better.”  A few moments later, I returned to the living room, to my place on the sofa.  At that very moment, my phone rang. It was one of the 4 doctors who had been caring for me.  Again, on the phone I could barely speak.  I told him, “I guess you heard what’s been going on with me.”  He said, “No. Actually, I was just calling to check on you.” When he then asked me how I was doing, I replied, for the first time ever, “Oh, not too good.” I then told him what had been going on, and he said, “Meet me in my office tomorrow.”  When I saw him, he took one look at me and knew what was happening.  He told me he was going to call in another prescription, a small white pill.  After we talked a while, I said, “I’m a patient guy, and I’ll do whatever I need to do. But I have to ask if you know how quickly this will work.”  He told me, “Oh, you’ll see results almost immediately.”   You know what? He was right.  I simply could not believe how fast things returned to “normal.”
 
I do not know if you have ever been reduced to asking God for a sign that things would be okay.  Physical pain. Emotional loss. Financial worries. I could go on.   If you have—and if you’re like me—then you felt, on one hand, silly for asking, but on the other hand, genuinely desperate. We feel just like Ahaz in today’s first reading. We want to ask, and we would really welcome a sign, but deep d.own, we know that we really do not need one.  We know that it always comes back to faith.  I suggest to people all the time, that, if you  are going to make the statement, “You’re going to be okay” to someone who is hurting, then we must, absolutely must know that “okay” does not necessarily mean the same.   When we suffer, it is as if we have to redefine words and phrases such as “okay” and “winning.”  Earthly winning is like numbers on a scoreboard.  For us as Christians, we all know it has nothing to do with that.  Christ won it for us a long time ago. That’s where our strength comes from. For a doctor to “randomly” call me on a Saturday night and then open his office on a Sunday is beyond my understanding.  Did I accept it as a “sign?”  No.  I simply accepted it as a gift from God. However it happened and why it happened the way it did is not as important as my belief that it was God’s hand at work.
 
Christ said that, in him, we have the only “sign” we will ever need.  May God grant us the vision to see Jesus present, especially in the most painful moments