Your Life Depends on Love

Most of all, love each other as if your life depended

on it.  Love makes up for practically anything.

1 Peter 4:8

Cancer is a frequent, uninvited visitor to the congregation of the church where I work.  We just lost a beloved saint whose prostate cancer metastasized after seventeen clean years.  Metastasized  breast cancer took another a few months prior to that. There are several cancer survivors among the members (bladder, blood, breast, colon, lung, lymphoma, rectal, uterine), and several people who are currently fighting the disease. One of my older choir members is confined to her home, struggling with multiple myeloma while another is dealing with rectal cancer.  In the past, many of us knew someone - far or near - who had been touched by some form of the disease.  Now it seems to have reached epidemic proportions.

It is easy to assume that there is little one can do in the face of the onslaught of this disease, other than pray and console.  My choir found this week that loving also means looking for concrete ways to help.  One of my altos came to me with the information that an alto cancer patients was having difficulty paying her co-pays through 6 weeks of once or twice daily treatments of chemo and radiation.  "Could we take up a love offering?"  I turned to my choir patriarch/matriarch, and we concluded, "Yes, we can."  Word spread outside the choir to the congregation, and the money slowly came in: little gifts rather than grand gestures.  When the dust settled, we had raised $1200+ to relieve the burden of her co-pays, and to be God's hands in blessing to her.  

Did we just "set a precedent?"   I certainly hope so, for God has a way of making sure that there is always a little bit to give if our hearts are willing to do so.  Extravagant love leans on God for His guidance and blessing.  He is, after all, the One with the cattle on a thousand hills. As long as we are willing to be the conduit, He can and will keep the blessings coming.