Just In Time

Just In Time

My friend Polly has been on a personal journey with cancer for more than eight years, although her family’s trek with this dreaded disease stretches back decades. Her mother, several maternal aunts, and her sister all had breast cancer, and the nagging thought of it was always there in Polly’s mind too.

So when she got the same diagnosis at age forty-eight, she was anxious and upset, but not really surprised. The shock came four years later, in 2007, when the cancer returned and spread to her lungs and bones (and no, I haven’t forgotten my happy-ending promise—keep reading!).

“I thought I was a goner,” she recalls. “I kept thinking, I hope I have another birthday.”

Polly had the lung tumors removed and started more chemo. We talked and prayed often, and Polly kept drawing closer to God as she sat on her front porch each day watching hummingbirds, reading the Bible, and talking with her heavenly Father in prayer.

Four months later, the PET scan showed significant improvement, and two months after that, all signs of the cancer were gone. Two and a half years later, she remains in an unexplained, complete remission despite stopping all treatments several months ago.

“It’s a blessing beyond my wildest dreams,” she says. “It’s been a wonderful journey of a whole new closeness with the Lord. He just knows what I need right now—this minute, this hour.

“I have learned to seize each day,” she adds. “Every day I get up and say, ‘You can have a good day or a bad day,’ and I always choose good.”

I believe Polly has been experiencing what it’s like to walk with God as He goes before you and lights your way during the dark times. Don’t expect that He will light up your whole journey—He might reveal just the next few steps. And don’t imagine that His provision will arrive way ahead of time so you can stockpile it until you’re ready to use it.

If you know the Old Testament story of the Israelites wandering in the desert for forty years, you’ll remember God sent just enough manna—a grain-like food—for each day (see Exodus 16). If they tried to gather extra to save for the next day, the leftovers turned moldy—except for the day before the Sabbath, when they were permitted to collect a double portion that still would be fresh the next day. It has been my experience that God continues to provide for His people, like my friend Polly, just what we need in the nick of time—not way ahead, as most of us would like!

My favorite illustration of God’s perfect timing is a story shared by Corrie ten Boom, the Dutch Christian concentration camp survivor whose family helped hide Jews from the Nazis during World War II. The conversation she relates took place when she was a little girl and her father tried to calm her fears that she would be unprepared when she had to die someday:

Father sat down on the edge of the narrow bed. “Corrie,” he began gently, “when you and I go to Amsterdam—when do I give you your ticket?”

I sniffed a few times, considering this.

“Why, just before we get on the train.”

“Exactly. And our wise Father in heaven knows when we’re going to need things, too. Don’t run out ahead of Him, Corrie. When the time comes that some of us will have to die, you will look in your heart and find the strength you need—just in time.”^a

“Don’t run out ahead of Him.”

What marvelous advice. God needs to go before us into each day. We don’t yet have what we need to face all of our tomorrows, because we are not yet there. But every day as we come to our heavenly Father in prayer, He promises to guide us and provide for us in that minute, that hour, that day.

I pray you’ll have faith in Him—the kind of faith Moses showed the Israelites when he knew he could not lead them into the Promised Land where they would face powerful enemies. I’d like to pray for you today Moses’ words of encouragement from Deuteronomy 31:6, spoken to a group of worried people who feared the unknown:

Do not be afraid and do not panic before them. For the LORD your God will personally go ahead of you. He will neither fail you nor abandon you. Amen.