A parable based on scripture for the first Sunday in Lent

Cancer was in the wilderness
of someone’s human body.
Cancer fasted and afterwards was famished.
A tempter came and said —
If you are so hungry,
command all these cells to be bread for you.”
And cancer answered —
I have the right to all the cells in the body
because I can turn them into me.

Again, the tempter took cancer
into the holy center of the body
and showed cancer
lungs and liver, lymph nodes and bones –
all the splendor of the human body,
and said — worship me
and I will give you everything,
even the human spirit.

Cancer had no problem with tests —
biopsy and CAT scan were mirrors
that cancer tried to use
to eat away at the courage and hope,
good humor, faith and friendship
of the people of the world
and break the heart of God.

For cancer took human beings
to the very pinnacle of experience
threatening to throw them off
all the joys of their lives,
break families,
and dim with constant fear
the sweetest daily pleasures,
but there were angels
to hold up all those people

a multitude of heavenly host
called surgery,
chemotherapy and radiation,
and some complementary ones —
reiki, probiotics, massage,
acupuncture, hypnosis and others.

And the air was filled with bright wings
of laughter and sleep and walking,
of companionship and prayer,
and on the hands of those angels
people were held up,

and those who fell furthest
found that Jesus of Nazareth
has always waited in the wilderness
to catch those in danger
of being dashed against the stone.

Please keep in your prayers or add to your prayer chain my friend Diane Karr.

“Jesus Carried Up to a Pinnacle of the Temple,” by James Jacques Joseph Tissot. Vanderbilt Divinity School Library, Art in the Christian Tradition.