Jake and Big Ten Games and Hating Cancer

I said to myself, “I won’t cry. Of course I won’t cry.”

(Yeah, right.)

Watch. Enjoy. What a special kid. (And see if you can get through it without asking yourself how YOU would respond if you had to prepare yourself for blindness. How would you handle waking up one day KNOWING that by the end of that day, you would never see anything again in this life?)

It was definitely worth the watch. Plus, I feel even more bonded to my sports-lovin’-hubby who just yesterday discovered the Hulu Big Ten’s Greatest Basketball Games Channel. We’re really hoping to catch a shot or two of him in the BAND.

BTW—once again, for the record, I HATE CANCER. Hate it. Despise it. Whether it’s this kid’s retinoblastoma or the cancer Pastor JollyBlogger is fighting or the breast cancer my one dear friend survived and my one dear friend died an agonizing death from.

I hate cancer.

And I am just so glad that God hates it so much that he sent His Only Begotten Son to eradicate it once and for all when He sets this world right again.

(Ooooh—total Tara brain jumps going on in this post, eh?) That reminds me of today’s RZIM Slice of Infinity by the extraordinary Jill Carattini: The One Who Came in Person. What a profound thinker and writer she is! Consider just to excerpts and then (hopefully) pop on over and read the entire essay:

“In his book The God Delusion, Oxford biologist Richard Dawkins sets forth the staggering estimation that post-Christian secular societies are far more moral than societies that operate from a religious foundation. He recounts the horrors carried out in the name of God, moving past the monstrosities of the 20th century at the hands of atheist regimes by claiming their atheism had nothing to do with their behavior. “I’m inclined to suspect,” he writes, “that there are very few atheists in prison.”(1) He is insistent that believers are worse than atheists when it comes to behaving ethically.

British statesman Roy Hattersley, himself a fellow atheist, disagrees … “Civilised people do not believe that drug addiction and male prostitution offend against divine ordinance. But those who do are the men and women most willing to change the fetid bandages, replace the sodden sleeping bags and—probably most difficult of all—argue, without a trace of impatience, that the time has come for some serious medical treatment.”

…

Though buried under insult and ignorance, Celsus had his finger on the very quality of Christianity that makes Christians as curious as the philosophy they profess: Our God came in person. God had to come near, as Celsus claims; though not because He couldn’t speak to us otherwise, nor because He was incapable of touching the world from where He stands. As a Father who longs to gather his children together, God came near because each child matters. God came near—God came in person—because one lost, or one hurting, or one in need was one God would lay down his life to reach.

Christmas is about remembering the one who came in person. It is this God who came near and reordered the world, calling us to see life and each other in startling new ways …”

(HT to TakeYourVitaminZ for the link to the video.)