And after we prayed, I asked her a question. The kind of pray-er who you just know when she starts in God is thinking … damn, it’s Dahn … I’d better pay attention or I’m gonna be in trouble!Īnd even though we were a thousand miles apart, I remember it like she was right there in the room. Dahn is one of those people who is just a nuclear-powered pray-er. So, I called a dear friend and prayer partner, Dahn Gandell. I remembered that the promise of the cross is that we never, ever stand there alone. And … in the middle of that fear, I remembered. The place where we come face to face with death. That had always been an image … but now it was real. My church will have to find a new pastor.Īnd as I lay in bed in the middle of the afternoon, trying to rest but wracked with anxiety, I realized I was at the foot of the cross. Next morning was the MRI … and then 30 hours of waiting for results.
AlI could think about was a friend my age with two kids who had woken up with numbness in his left foot, and 16 months later he was dead of a tumor on his brain stem.
I’m amazed I was able to drive home without crashing. In the space of one sentence, everything I had just assumed – that I would live a normal life, watch my kids grow up – all of that was now up for grabs and frankly, wasn’t looking so good. Do not just say “tumor, growth or something weird” followed by “see you later!” Because in the space of one sentence, my whole life had changed. Let me hit pause here and say to any doctors in the congregation … please never do this. “Oh, you know, MS, Lou Gehrig’s disease, something like that.”Īnd so I said, “Uh … is there any chance that it’s something, you know … less serious?”Īnd he shook his head and said, “Nah.” And then he sent me out to be scheduled for a brain MRI the next morning and sent me home. “Well, it’s either a brain tumor, a growth or something weird.” Did a couple of basic tests right there in the exam room and then said: When that feeling wouldn’t go away I went to see a doctor. Nine years ago this month, I was sitting at a dinner when I began to have trouble speaking, it felt like my tongue was sort of dead in my mouth. It is that incredibly small thing … which can lead to extraordinary things … if I trust enough to let it. This tiny aspirin, small, insignificant … this is my mustard seed. … this is a day that odds say I shouldn’t have hadĪnd I ask myself: “How am I going to use the gift of this one day?” … this is a day I thought I wouldn’t have. I will do it for the rest of my life.Įvery morning, I hold this tiny pill in my hand and I remember
I have done this every morning for nearly nine years.
“If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Uproot yourself, and plant yourself in the sea,’ and it would obey you.Įvery morning, I take one tiny low-dose aspirin. ĭonate to support the mission and ministries of All Saints at. Sermon by Mike Kinman at All Saints Church, Pasadena, on Sunday, October 6, 2019.įollow All Saints Church on Twitter us on Facebook at. Love calls us through joy and sorrow – and yet even the sorrow can be a window to joy when we walk through life together.” Life is too short and too beautiful for us to be prisoners of fear. “I want us to move our money from fear to love because I want us to move our lives from fear to love. That’s where the joy is! Don’t hold back in fear. Give your lives, give your whole selves for love. Because while money is really important, it is also sign and symbol of what I really want to ask you to give and that is your lives. “I don’t have a problem talking with you about giving money at All Saints Church.
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