16 May 2019

Rejoice in All Things

By: Annonyous

On March 24th, after months of undiagnosed stomach pain and swelling, with several visits to the E.R. and two stays in the hospital, the preacher’s surgeons decided to perform an emergency procedure. They removed a few inches of his small intestine, along with a malignant carcinoid tumor that was causing an increasingly dangerous bowel blockage. They also removed 15 lymph nodes, three of which were infected.

So, then he had special blood tests and a PET scan, and they found another swollen lymph node in the deep pelvic area, and another 1.2 cm carcinoid tumor in his liver. It seems the carcinoid, which is a slow-growing cancer, goes right for the liver. And he might also have prostate cancer.

Sounds nasty, but the preacher trusts the Lord.

To him, the great news is that he suffered agonizing pain on and off through several months, and the scans and x-rays didn’t show the cause.

How could that be great news? Because, had he not suffered that pain, those insidious malignancies would still be growing quietly inside him. He believes that it was God’s providence to reveal the danger in time, to turn aside this attack of the evil one.

He has been referred to some outstanding specialists. Two of his doctors said that they are praying for him. The liver surgeon is the head of a hospital’s “Abdominal Transplant Department,” an expert in liver treatment. This side of heaven, he couldn’t ask for better care. And from the other side? Well there is the Holy Spirit and God’s ministering angels who came to his side under similar circumstances many years ago.

He remembers well those who came to his bedside to comfort and pray with he and his beloved wife, and he remembers leaving the isolation room after nearly two weeks, declared infection free, and all his GP could later say was, “You must be perplexed that all those specialists couldn’t tell you what you almost died of.”

But he wasn’t perplexed. He was rejoicing in the Lord!