Prognosis

The specter of cancer has once again made it's presence felt in my life. The husband of a member of my Sunday School class has just been diagnosed with leiomyosarcoma following a biopsy a week ago. I'm the "go to" health professional in my church community, so immediately people want to know what the prognosis is. Difficult question to answer as there are many unknowns as to stage and how things look following surgical excision of the tumor...yet people really want to know these data. The real unspoken question is "how long do I/does he have?" My teenagers and I watched a fascinating movie on Saturday night called "In Time". The premise of the movie (starring Justin Timberlake) is that in the future, time will be the currency of the realm. "Rich" people will be those who have all the time they want and "poor" people die before their 26th birthday. All people stop aging at 25 years - no matter how long they live. It was spiritually intriguing as it got to the heart of the question "how long do I have?" Each person, once they turned 25, knew exactly how long they had to live as it was a glowing tattoo on their left forearm. The hero went about Robin Hood-esque stealing time from the rich and giving it to the poor. He modeled what it meant to know how to live each moment of his life to the fullest and to be truly human in his outreach. He was demonized by the establishment for breaking down the status quo and giving hope to the hopeless. There's truly a lot to unpack in this movie, and I'm still living into the teachings. We humans tend to believe that we have unlimited time to do things - and so we waste our lives on acquiring stuff and on meaningless distractions. What if today you knew that you only had 24 hours to live? How would you spend your day? How about a year to live - what things would take primacy in your life? Would you spend your time acquiring...or would something else take precedence? Life is 100% fatal; everyone who's ever lived has died. The prognosis for your life however is not known. How are you going to make the most of the time that you have left? How are you going to live your life so that it has meaning for you and for those around you? You have been given today...what's the prognosis? Great things can be accomplished in short amounts of time - it's all about choices. Peace for your journey, Dan