Shattered lives
I do not remember the exact day or date, but it was around 11 in the morning, about four years ago. Few patients were waiting in front of the chemotherapy ward for their turn at the Regional Cancer Centre, Thiruvananthapuram. I was there too, as a bystander for someone I knew. The environment was quite familiar to me as I was a regular visitor. People from different cultural backgrounds and who had lived in various places were sharing their life experiences without any differences; all of them were subduing their emotions. Some believed it was their fate. One glance at them showed you fear-stricken faces and eyes brimming with tears.
Shattered dreams
As I sat there looking around, a shawl came flying towards me as if someone had thrown it to me. I caught it and turned around to see a girl of about 18 years of age. She stretched out her hand for the shawl which had fallen from her head. Her bald head could not even hold the wrap back from the slightest wind. Her pale and dismayed face showed that she was a youngster yet a helpless victim to the deadly disease, CANCER!
Reluctantly I enquired about her whereabouts. She was a Bachelor of English student, hailing from Palakkad. Beside her sat an older woman, her eyes filled with tears. One look at her made me realise that it was her mother. I asked the girl about her, and my intuition was right. Their dreams had been shattered. The girl was living a life which could end midway. While I looked at her, she put her head down, indicating that she did not want to talk much. Not knowing what to say, I consoled her with a sentence which is quite regularly repeated, “Everything will be fine” and thought I had ended my conversation. But she replied saying, “Yes sir, it’s all that you can say now.”
Is there any hope ?
Those words sadly echo in my heart even today. I don’t know if she is alive or not. I got up from my chair that day thinking I shouldn’t have spoken to her. But certain thoughts started running through my mind. How helpless man is! No matter whatever he has in this world, he is bound into a cage of limitations. Such kind of limitations had come in the way of this girl too, like an unwelcome guest in the form of a fatal disease. She had never expected this in her life. She might have to go along with this friend, a friend who has no discrimination of colour, caste or creed- Death.
We all might be going through different problems in our lives. Doctors might fail us.
The eternal hope
But in the Holy Bible, our Lord Almighty has said, “I will never leave you or abandon you.” (Hebrews 13:5).
Before we realise it, a deadly disease is eating away at our lives too. The pain of this disease is much worse than cancer. The consequences of this can lead us to death. This disease might not have a terminology in medical science. The Bible calls it SIN.
But there is a healer, a doctor who can heal us from our sins. He will undertake for us and will touch our hearts, minds and souls. The Great Physician! He is none other than our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.
My dear friend, in order to be healed from your sins, all you have to do is open your heart and invite Him to be your Lord and Savior. When we stand helpless, He is the only one who can come and be a helper for us. Let us turn our attention to a passage from the Bible.
On hearing this, Jesus said to them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
Today, I really desire from the bottom of my heart, that the girl mentioned above (whose name I don’t know) may know this Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.