Jesus Knows Its Scary to be Us

This blog was written two years ago when Katie was initially diagnosed. The tumor referred to below was eradicated with a very difficult, year long regimen of chemotherapy and radiation. Since that time, however, further tumors have surfaced in her lungs. As of this morning, she is fighting for her life. Please pray.

My mom and I were talking this morning when she told me about a young girl who is part of her church family. Katie is 15 and has stage 4 cancer. The mass is so large that it reaches from her pelvis to her sternum and is so imposing that in the ER they were unable to insert a catheter. She and her family are pursuing aggressive treatments to try and stop the spread of the disease but even that is proving difficult as her parents no longer have insurance. All of this seems ridiculously unfair. She's 15 for goodness sake and wants to be a missionary when she grows up.

As I was sorting laundry this afternoon and thinking through the unfairness of it all, God reminded me of something I heard this week in Bible Study: "Jesus knows its scary to be us." 
He reminded me that He knows this not in a omnipotent, theoretical way, but in an experiential way. He knows its scary to be us, because He created us, He loves us, but more than that, He was one of us.

Disease, poverty, hunger, pain are all common place here. Its painful to enter the world and, in most cases, its painful to leave it. We've never lived in a world without pain. Jesus, however, came from a place where none of that exists or will exist. He left the beauty of Heaven to live with us in the squalor of Earth. He chose that. He chose us.

The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel. -Isaiah 7:14  

The prophet Isaiah calls Jesus, Immanuel. God with us. Jesus, in all His divinity, walked on this soil as a man enduring all the crumminess that comes with that. He knows what it is to be hungry, thirsty, tired, tempted, sad, and to grieve. He knows injustice, fear, uncertainty, and unfairness. He knows it because He lived it. Jesus knows its scary to be us.  

In most ways, the fact that the Creator God became one of us, makes the difficult parts of life tolerable, slightly easier even. More importantly, though, it teaches us that we can trust Him.We can trust Him because He cared enough to send the best, the most precious, the most sacred part of Himself so that we don't have to do it alone. As a result, we can trust His timing, His purpose, His plans, even when they don't make any sense to us.

So, while its crazy unfair that Katie is facing a very uncertain future, she's not facing it alone. Immanuel is there.