Cancer’s always been a bit of a mysterious evil to me. I knew it was bad, but I had no idea what it actually was. Fortunately, my wife is excessively smart and she learned about it during her pre-med undergraduate degree. So I asked her to explain it to me.
Basically, cancer is when cells in your body don’t function the way they should. Either they reproduce more than they should, they produce the wrong things, or they refuse to die when they should. That’s why doctors sometimes find teeth or other weird things in tumors—the cells were reproducing faster than they should, they weren’t dying, and they were producing the wrong thing in the wrong area. (Forgive my extremely simple understanding of the disease.)
It’s a crazy concept, though. The disease is not that the cells don’t reproduce. They’re extremely active. They’re holding on as long as possible. They just aren’t doing what they were meant to do…and it’s destructive. It’s a disease. I wonder how many of us function in life like cancer cells.
We miss our purpose. We get over-active. We refuse to let go when it’s time to let go.
It’s important we focus our efforts on the right things. Too often it’s easy for life and circumstances to dictate what we should focus our efforts on. Life tells us we need more money. Circumstances tell us to cling to security. So we get overactive pursuing those things. We spend all our time producing the wrong things. And we refuse to let go.
I believe God calls all of us to something greater than we could possibly imagine. And it rarely involves more money or security. Sure…those things might be part of the gig…but they aren’t the point.
When we pursue those things and neglect our true purpose, we function like cancer. We’re destructive. We’re sick. We may not physically die, but the beautiful purpose God placed on our life dies.
I don’t care how busy you are, how productive you are…if you’re doing the wrong things…you’re missing the point.
Be busy. But be busy with the right things. And let go of the things that you shouldn’t be doing.
