Priorities Reoriented – Sort of

What would you do if you knew you only had two days to live? What about two months? Two years? Forty years? Would your priorities change based on which dating you were given?

Well, I haven’t been given an exact time. None of my doctors are God.

All the same, with an aggresive Leukemia trying to kill me, I’ve been living as though I only have two or three months. I’m not suggesting I know this is my exact timeframe—and I haven’t been considered terminal, the doctors are treating me in the hopes of curing me—but the likelihood of my being put into remission has, naturally speaking, been termed low by the experts who have poured over my case.

So, what has happened to my priorities since September when I relapsed?

Knowing, loving, and serving Christ has been my first priority since my conversion at age 20. That isn’t to say I have done this perfectly—far from it!—but by God’s grace the trajectory of my life has been in this direction. Being sick with cancer, however, has had a way of focusing it and intensifying it. When you stand losing all things in this life—family included—what will you cling to? Again by God’s grace, Christ has shown himself sufficient. He has provided joy through the deepest times of pain, which not only includes the physical pain, but through the emotional pain of thinking of leaving a wife without a husband and two young boys with a dad.

And certainly the priority of my family has intensified. There is much to reflect on here especially as I consider whether I have always put family where it belonged, above work and school. I’ll save those reflections for now.

But many things have dropped off of my priority list. I want to make some further reflections on this in future posts as well, but I have given over to God all my desires and hopes for academic work, including publishing. I pulled out of a book I was co-authoring with a top NT scholar that would have been published with one of the major Christian academic publishers. I have taken some steps to get a few last things done to tie up loose ends in order to be responsible with the work God had given me time to do while I was in remission. I’m hopeful you’ll see a co-authored piece on translation theory in print, maybe next year. I have, however, put aside a peer-reviewed journal article that has returned with some revisions that I was pretty excited about—I and some others think it makes a decent contribution to a topic in Greek language study and our reading of John 11. If I get healthy again, I’ll revise it and get it in print. But if I don’t, I feel very free that Christ’s plan for me is better. I can rest secure in his good plan that might not involve my participation in Christian scholarship. And that’s okay. They’ll get on without me!

[My love of Greek and the study of it has not dropped off the list though, even if perhaps it is last. I think I have some neat reflections about this to come and being who God has made us each to be.]

So, I haven’t had a major shift in priorities with the prospect of death put before me. Some things dropped off my list but predominately my focus on Christ has simply intensified along with the subordinate but correlate ministry to my family and friends.

I think the following passage deserves contemplation since everyone is appointed to die once and Jesus told this to his followers who also didn’t know how long a life they would have:

‘Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done.’ (Matthew 16:24-27 NIV)

Notice it doesn’t say “wait until you get cancer” to get your priorities right.