At Silver Star

Thursday my friend Barbara White treated me to lunch at Silver Star Chinese Restaurant—great food!

Hadn’t seen Barbara since before Ginny and I went on vacation so we had lots of conversation to catch up on both at my home and at Silver Star:

Barbara’s chemotherapy seems to have taken. Hardly any cancer markers left in her blood. But she feels bone weary and lethargic.

I said that feeling is natural. After all, when Jesus brought Lazarus back from the dead, He did not tell him to go hoe corn; He said to loose him from the winding sheets and give him dinner—relaxation before activity.

Ever notice that Jesus has common sense?

Barbara’s doctor tells her that her cancer may reoccur; statistically this kind often shows up again in three to six months after a first round of chemo. Barbara feels well at the moment and is still thinking about starting the evangelistic/Christian life meetings we talked about last time.

Barbara, an award-winning newspaper columnist, is the author of the Along The Way series of books at www.bluefishbooks.info .

I told her about my continuing frustrations over writing the book on the will of God, (haven’t touched it since before vacation) and that led us into an interesting discussion of Scripture.

Barbara is a groupie. She meets with a bunch of different groups. Yesterday she’d joined nine other ladies in a tea room for a two-hour discussion of whatever a group of nine ladies discuss. (Do nine ladies with tea leaves make a quorum or a coven?).

Barbara also attends a Bible study at her retirement home, church functions, and she faithfully goes to her Tuesday Night Group—which for the past 15 years has met on Thursdays.

In one of these groups the discussion touched on Luke Chapter Eight, where Jesus claimed kinship with “:These which hear the word of God and do it”.

(Mathew, Chapter Eight; and Mark, Four and Five, cover more or less the same series of incidents.)

“Now it came to pass on a certain day, that He went into a ship with His disciples: and He said unto them, ‘Let us go over unto the other side of the lake’. And they launched forth”.

Jesus went to sleep in the bow and there arose a great tempest in the sea.

“Lord, save us! We Perish,” the disciples yelled as water filled the boat.

He woke up, and first rebuked the disciples “Why are ye fearful?”, then He rebuked the waves, and the sea obeyed Him.

They may have been afraid of the storm waves, but now they were even more afraid of Jesus!

“The men marveled saying, “What manner of Man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey Him”?

The boat no sooner landed in the country of the Gadarenes, than a wild man raced from the tombs screaming and frothing. The demons in him made him cry and cut himself with sharp stones. He broke the chains when people tried to control him… “But, when he saw Jesus afar off, he ran and worshiped Him”.

Jesus cast the demons from the man into a herd of pigs which ran off a cliff.

When the villagers came out to see—they “see him that was possessed with the devil and had the legion, sitting, clothed, and in his right mind: And they were afraid”!

They begged Jesus to—Go Away.

As Jesus got back into the boat, the man that had been possessed with the devil prayed Him that he might be with Him.

Jesus would not let him come.

“Go home,” Jesus said, “To thy friends and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee, and hath had compassion on thee”.

Barbara noted how many things people were afraid of in this passage: The storm, the sea, Jesus stilling the storm, the demon-possessed man, Jesus casting out the demons, the loss of the pigs…

This Jesus is one scary dude. Strange things happen around Him.

And in a letter addressed to Christians, the Scripture says, “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God”.

Barbara said the Gentleman Formerly Known As Legion did the will of God. He did not go with Jesus. He did not get in the boat. He did exactly what Jesus said. “He departed and began to publish in Decapolis how great things Jesus had done for him; and all men did marvel”.

I don’t know the reference, but Barbara said that at a later time Jesus visited that same territory and a crowd of 4,000 people gathered to hear Him—perhaps as a result of the obedient, healed wild man who did the will of God.

What a cool conversation we had over egg foo young.

Barbara also mentioned that in one of her groups, one guy began talking about the return of Christ quoting Thessalonians, another man waded in with verses from Revelation…

With a groan, I put in my own two cents worth.

“I go along with Paul,” I said. “Wherefore, beloved brethren, confront one another with these words”!

Cancer will never get Barbara—she’ll choke to death on an egg roll laughing at my stupid jokes.