Day +48 A journey to the Promised Land?

BOX SCORE	6/24/2024
Element	Current	Std. Range	Trend
Hemoglobin	11.2	13-17	^
Platelets	155	140-375	v
ANC	3540	1800-8300	^

Every now and then the Lord impresses a message on my mind, when I am least expecting it. One example of this happened when I was undergoing my very first round of chemotherapy at Kaiser Sunnyside Medical Center in July, 2021. See the post titled "Revelation in the Night." That time the message was that the chemotherapy I was going through was a kind of baptism, intended to cleanse my body of the leukemia. Much like my water baptism as a follower of Jesus Christ was a symbol of dying to my old self and being buried with Christ, as I was immersed in the baptistry, so Jesus died to save my soul and was buried. Then, just as He was raised from the tomb to life as the Glorified Son of God, I was raised from the water to a new and glorious eternal life free of the sin and shame that had led me astray into a good deal of misery. 

Three years ago today, when I was 74, I was told, "We're not certain, but we think it is some kind of leukemia." A day or two ago, I was impressed with a new idea. This time, I saw my journey with leukemia in the context of the travels of the Jewish Patriach Abraham. Abraham was born Abram, son of Terah, in the City of Ur of the Chaldeans, which was near the Persian Gulf. When Abram's brother Haran died, Terah, their father, took the family, including seventy year old Abram and his wife Sarai and Haran's son Lot, and set out on a journey through Mesopotamia. Their destination was Canaan, which lay across the Arabian desert, near the Mediterranean Sea. 

As sometimes happens in life, the journey was interrupted. At the city of Haran (also spelled Harran, or Charran) in the region of modern Syria, Terah and his family stopped for a time. 

https://bible-history.com/maps/abrahams-journeys

Terah and his family lived in Haran for about five years, and then Terah died. In the impression the Lord gave me, this traumatic event might be compared to my lying in an Emergency Department bed in Salem and being told, "We're not certain, but we think it is some kind of leukemia."

The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. So Abram went, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he set out from Harran. (Genesis 12:1, 4)

Abram and his extended family with their possessions and servants traveled to Canaan. I, on the other hand, was traveling light. I had the clothes on my back and my cell phone and wallet, when I set out by ambulance from Salem Hospital to Sunnyside Hospital the next day. What was similar to Abram's journey was the desert-like temperature. It was 106 degrees when I arrived at Sunnyside.  

⁶ Abram traveled through the land as far as the site of the great tree of Moreh at Shechem. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. ⁷ The Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built an altar there to the Lord, who had appeared to him.

⁸ From there he went on toward the hills east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. There he built an altar to the Lord and called on the name of the Lord. (Genesis 12:6-8)

I arrived at Sunnyside alone and pretty frightened. Nurse Morgan, who checked me into my room was very kind, and we discovered that we are both believers. She told me there were many believers among the oncology staff. That was a comfort.  

 

When Morgan departed so I could get settled, you can bet I "called on the name of the Lord!" My version of building an altar came a few days later when I posted a handful of my favorite passages from Scripture on the bulletin board in my room. I began to feel a little more at home, and when Dr. Mansoor explained that "some kind of leukemia" was actually Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML), he also explained that there were things that could be done to treat it and even a possibility of a cure by bone marrow transplant (BMT), although he did mention I was probably too old for BMT. Then he added, "You are ridiculously healthy for a man with a grave illness. I can throw everything I've got at you." Perhaps, there is a promised land? 

 

¹⁰ Now there was a famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt to live there for a while because the famine was severe. (Genesis 12:10)

My famine involved nearly three years of being treated with various kinds of chemotherapy. This resulted in a sort of weakened condition as one might expect to accompany starvation. I "went down to Egypt" for a while, when the AML went into full remission for about six months in early 2022, and life returned to near normal, kind of like it did for Abram. 

So Abram went up from Egypt to the Negev, with his wife and everything he had, and Lot went with him. ² Abram had become very wealthy in livestock and in silver and gold.

From the Negev he went from place to place until he came to Bethel, to the place between Bethel and Ai where his tent had been earlier ⁴ and where he had first built an altar. (Genesis 13:1-4)

And then the AML returned and I found myself in the desert struggling with "famine" again. As I lay in Sunnyside Hospital receiving more chemotherapy over the Christmas and New Year holidays of 2023-2024, Jill and I learned that there were new developments at Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) in BMT for geriatric patients. 

When we left Sunnyside, I had another biopsy, which showed that, for the moment I was in remission, and then I was referred to Dr. Meyers at OHSU. After an agonizing process of prayer for decision making, God showed me that He still had a purpose for me to fulfill. As usual, God who operates on a need-to-know basis with his kids, has not specified what that purpose is, yet. Jill and I decided that, although there are significant risks involved, we would proceed with BMT. And today is day 48, post BMT, and I am doing very well.

Although I am still recovering, I feel as if I have reached the promised land. There is finally real hope that I will be free of leukemia. And along those lines, we got the final result yesterday of the biopsy I had two weeks ago. It showed 

NO SIGN OF DISEASE!!

So, what about Abraham? All we've heard about is Abram. Well, I will admit that I have glossed over some of the story. So, here's a bit more...

God made a covenant with Abram, telling him that the land between the river of Egypt and the Euphrates river would belong to his descendants. Abram was confused. He had no descendants, and Sarai, his wife was barren and beyond the child-bearing years. Sarai told Abram to take her servant Hagar and have a child by her. Abram did so, and Hagar gave him a son named Ishmael. 

Sarai had come to despise Hagar and to mistreat her. Hagar took Ishmael and ran away. God did send them back to the house of Abram. And then, thirteen years later, 

When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to him and said, “I am God Almighty; walk before me faithfully and be blameless. ² Then I will make my covenant between me and you and will greatly increase your numbers.”

³ Abram fell facedown, and God said to him, ⁴ “As for me, this is my covenant with you: You will be the father of many nations. ⁵ No longer will you be called Abram; your name will be Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations. (Genesis 17:1-5) 

Mind you, this is the Cliff Notes version of the story. A year after this visit, Sarai, whom the Lord renamed Sarah,  bore a son, Isaac,* to Abraham; she was 90 years old. There are many more facets to the story of Abraham. To get the full story, read Genesis chapters 11 through 23. Actually, the whole book of Genesis is a fascinating read, from the creation of the world, to man's betrayal of his Creator; the story of the great flood and Noah and the Ark, when God destroyed the world to cleanse it of the sins of mankind. Noah and his wife, and their sons and their wives alone were saved. But Noah's descendants eventually started building the tower of Babel to climb to heaven and be like God, so God confused their languages and dispersed them around the earth. 

And then we meet Abram and read the history of the Hebrew people from their inception as the offspring of Abraham and Sarah, up to their enslavement in Egypt, which lasted 400 years. 

Although I make no claim to be a great man or a great patriarch, God has showed me that each man's journey is not so different from the next man's. The details vary greatly, but God made a covenant with Abraham that he would be the father of many nations and was true to His word. In the same way, every man will live through good times and bad, but God will always be faithful. He made a New Covenant with mankind,

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16)

May He bless you as richly as He has blessed me. 

* The name Isaac, means laughing. When Sarah overheard the Lord telling Abraham that she would bear him a son, she laughed aloud.