Tony Snow and cancer’s unexpected blessings

From Justin Taylor at Between Two Worlds:

Tony Snow, conservative commentator and former press secretary to President Bush (2006-2007), died this morning.

Snow, an evangelical, wrote an article for Christianity Today in 2007 entitled Cancer’s Unexpected Blessings. Here is an excerpt, the ending of his essay:

I
sat by my best friend’s bedside a few years ago as a wasting cancer
took him away. He kept at his table a worn Bible and a 1928 edition of
the Book of Common Prayer. A shattering grief disabled his family, many
of his old friends, and at least one priest. Here was a humble and very
good guy, someone who apologized when he winced with pain because he
thought it made his guest uncomfortable. He retained his equanimity and
good humor literally until his last conscious moment. “I’m going to try
to beat [this cancer],” he told me several months before he died. “But
if I don’t, I’ll see you on the other side.”

His gift
was to remind everyone around him that even though God doesn’t promise
us tomorrow, he does promise us eternity—filled with life and love we
cannot comprehend—and that one can in the throes of sickness point the
rest of us toward timeless truths that will help us weather future
storms.

Through such trials, God bids us to choose:
Do we believe, or do we not? Will we be bold enough to love, daring
enough to serve, humble enough to submit, and strong enough to
acknowledge our limitations? Can we surrender our concern in things
that don’t matter so that we might devote our remaining days to things
that do?

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Grace upon grace

Among many other graces, God has given wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption to the one who trusts Christ. First, he receives wisdom, which is the mind of Christ, making the believer truly wise unto salvation. Second, he receives the imputed righteousness of Christ, which meets all the demands of the law. Third, there is sanctification, which is the positional holiness necessary for new living. Fourth, there is personal redemption, which is the believer being purchased by God. The believer enters into all this grace by way of God acting upon him, bringing him into the blessings of Christ. Calvin writes, “You have your beginning from God, ‘who calleth those things which are not,’ passing by those things that appear to be; and your subsistence is founded upon Christ, and thus you have no occasion to be proud.” These blessings of grace can be obtained only through Christ’s death for believers.

–Steve Lawson

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My only appeal: Mercy!

“When I come to the Lord after I’ve blown it, I’ve only one argument to make. It’s not the argument of the difficulty of the environment that I am in. It’s not the argument of the difficult people that I’m near. It’s not the argument of good intentions that were thwarted in some way.

I come to the Lord with only one appeal; his mercy. I’ve no other defense. I’ve no other standing. I’ve no other hope. I can’t escape the reality of my biggest problem; me! So I appeal to the one thing in my life that’s sure and will never fail. I appeal to the one thing that guaranteed not only my acceptance with God, but the hope of new beginnings and fresh starts. I appeal on the basis of the greatest gift I ever have or ever will be given.

I leave the courtroom of my own defense, I come out of hiding and I admit who I am. But I’m not afraid, because I’ve been personally and eternally blessed. Because of what Jesus has done, God looks on me with mercy. It’s my only appeal, it’s the source of my hope, it’s my life. Mercy, mercy me!”

—Paul David Tripp, Whiter Than Snow (Wheaton, Ill: Crossway Books, 2008), 22

(HT:  First Importance)

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