“Yes” to God?

Thanks to my sage friend who owns it, the Olde English Tea Room is a place that feeds me in both body and soul–and today has proven exactly how/why.  During my time there this afternoon, I had a chance to share a rather amazing story with my friend/the owner, a story that is connected to my sick season memoir.  After the story I shared, my friend then asked me a question that completely stopped me in my tracks.  She does that quite often.

The story I told her was one I heard just yesterday upon returning home from UNC for another blood check.  Thus, it could not have been a more perfect day to hear such a story.  The story was told to me by another “old” friend whom I’ve blogged about before (B.C.’s his name) and was actually about a dear friend of his who had been an agnostic for decades, until she caved in to B.C.’s persistent request to read about my sick season.  After reading, she miraculously made the decision to say “Yes” to God.

Upon hearing this, I was overcome with emotion.  My friend at the tea room was too, as was B.C.  The thing that really sent me reeling, though, was my tea room friend’s eventual question.  She looked at me through her tears and said something along the lines of, “Can you imagine, Angela, what it would have been like if God could have told you before you ever even went through cancer that going through it and then stepping out to share your journey would mean the presence of one more person in Heaven?”

Yes, I was able to imagine that; and I wasn’t pleased with myself afterward.  It seemed that my friend’s underlying question was, “Wouldn’t you have done it, wouldn’t you have gone through anything just to bring one person to God?”  I don’t know.  I wish I could jump right to, “Yes!  Of course I would have!”  But, I’m just not sure what I would have done had I been given a real choice.  If given the chance to live out a disease-free life down here, a life with no post-traumatic stress from wicked cancer and treatment that was quite wicked as well, I can’t say with any level of certainty that I wouldn’t jump at the chance.

I’m starting to see very clearly why God does not allow us omniscience.  We really, truly cannot be trusted with it.  As untrustworthy as we are though, he chooses to bless us anyway.  I know that I feel blessed beyond measure now knowing that God, who could have revealed himself through many/any means, actually chose to reveal himself to B.C.’s friend through the story that he’s allowing me to live out down here.   Yet, it’s possible that I might have chosen a different, much less painful story to live out, even if I had been allowed to foreknow this one amazing and eternal result.  No, we’re certainly not the ones to be trusted at all.

Mother Teresa used to say that Jesus would had died the exact same agonizing death if there had only ever been one of us down here on this planet.  Unlike many churches appear to be today, Jesus Christ was not a numbers guy.  Jesus not only would have gone to hell and back for just one life–he actually did.  And he is our standard–the Standard.  I want to be the type of woman, the type of person, that consistently assigns Jesus’ kind of value to just one beating heart; and I’m so far from being that kind of woman, that kind of person.

It’s hard to be this woman, this person, in our culture.  Laying down our life for others, suffering on others’ behalf, isn’t glorified much at all.  It’s crazy, right?  I believe it was C.S. Lewis who said that Jesus Christ was either a raving lunatic or he really was the Son of God.  What if we were “crazy” like Christ?  What if we didn’t hesitate to say “Yes” to God?  What if we stopped always counting the cost to ourselves?  What would we do for just one?  Would we be willing to say “Yes” to God, come whatever may, for just one him or her?