Rita

Today took a detour at about quarter to five.

A girl that translates for us asked if we would go pray over her friend who is sick. Rita has cancer, but doesn’t know it. Everybody around her knows but nobody is telling her. “The doctor’s can’t explain it.” This is what she knows. She doesn’t know she is going to die, that is unless God heals her.

She’s young, in her twenties, and she’s optimistic. “God is going to heal me.” But she is one of the few saying this. It doesn’t look like she’s got much time.

I don’t pretend to know how God works in this world. There are times when I question, doubt and wonder what He is doing here. There are times when ‘why?’ is the only word on my tongue. Doubt and questioning are, I believe, a part of faith. When we are willing to do those things with our faith, then we are actually taking it seriously. Like the man who asked Christ to heal his son we should cry “I believe, Lord, help my unbelief.”

Thomas Kelley wrote something along the lines of this: “We want so badly to understand God, but a lot of the time all He wants of us is to trust Him.” What is certain in my mind and my heart and what I do trust is that God is good, all the time. Rita echoed this, several times, during our brief time together.

Everyday, she told us, she sees God’s glory. Every day she praises Him for what He has done in her life. She is suffering, cancer is eating away at her and her life here is ending. Praise still flowed.

God is good.

Bebo Norman, amazingly, has a song about a girl, who happens to be named Rita, who passed away. It might as well have been written about the Rita I just met. Here are the lyrics.

Rita’s song

Lay down softly, in our sorrow. Lay down, sister, to die. And cover over, my sweet Father, cover over her eyes.

Your broken body, it can not weather the years your youth longs to spend. So go down graceful. Sleep with the angels. And wake up whole again.

It was not your time. That’s a useless lie. A fallen world took your life.
But the God who sometimes can’t be found will wrap Himself around you. So lay down, sister, lay down.

Slower passing are the hours. To tell this tale, it takes its time. But the finest moment, no man can measure, is to look your Savior in the eyes.

So take her tender, to your table. And take her from this killing floor, to taste the water that is forever. Let her be thirsty no more.

Cause it was not her time. That’s a useless lie. A fallen world, it took her life.
But the God that sometimes can’t be found will wrap Himself around you. So lay down, sister, lay down.
But the God who sometimes can’t be found will wrap himself around you. So lay down, Rita, lay down.

On the cross, Christ faced death. In the resurrection, he conquered it. And we are allowed to join in that, to meet it in a perfect confluence. The sting of death is gone and Rita can face it, and for that matter, is facing it with the hope of the future glory God holds for her in heaven.