Things on the Twelve Acre Woods don’t always go as planned. Take gardening for example: it’s not (entirely) that we don’t know what we’re doing. It’s often that we’re not doing what we know. We start seeds too late, we don’t amend the soil properly. Perhaps our worst infraction is that when things are actually growing, we get to the dog days of a Missouri summer, and it’s just too hot to go out and tend the garden. It doesn’t take too many days of skipped watering to ruin what would have been a bountiful harvest. When we don’t do those things we know Creation (and by extension, the Creator) requires for our efforts to succeed, we can expect Creation (and by extension, the Creator) to say no, right?
I want to look at a passage in 2 Corinthians that I had never given much thought to prior to my cancer diagnosis. In 2 Corinthians 12, Paul mentions that he could have a propensity to boast in his preaching about the special revelations he’d received from Jesus.
‘Therefore, so that I would not exalt myself, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan to torment me so that I would not exalt myself.’ 2 Corinthians 12:7. There are a couple of places in Old Testament (Numbers 33:55, and Ezekiel 28:24) that refer to thorns in the flesh. In each instance, the thorn refers to aggravation caused by allowing enemies to remain in proximity to the Israelites. That seems consistent with Paul’s usage here, where the aggravating enemy is Satan himself, or at least a proxy.
There’s debate about whether Paul’s thorn manifested itself as a physical ailment ( a stutter, for example) or a more spiritual issue, like a familiar temptation. I have no idea and won’t speculate. The point is that Paul recognized it as a hindrance to his ministry (while also recognizing it as preventing him from getting big-headed in his ministry), and asked God to remove it. God said no.
The Bible is full of examples of God telling us no. Here are just a few: “Of that one tree, you shall not eat.” Moses pleaded with God to be allowed into the promised land, but God said, “I’m not even going to discuss this.” Jesus himself asked the Father to take the cup of suffering from him before he went to the cross, but conceded, “Your will be done rather than mine.” Sometimes God tells us no to set boundaries, as in the case of the tree in the garden. Sometimes God’s discipline is the reason, as in Moses’s case. Sometimes God’s no to an individual is in the service of his greater plan, in Jesus’s case (And a big hallelujah for that no!)
Before I had my first biopsy on the tumor in my hip, I and my entire prayer army asked God that it would come back as something benign. God said no, and I was disappointed, but I was able to trust him. Before my chest CT scan and second biopsy, I and my entire prayer army asked God to for no sign of the cancer in my lungs. God said no, and I was devastated. I was angry, and I was confused. While taking the WonderBeagles on a short walk around the Twelve Acre Woods after coming home from that doctor’s visit, I had a moment where I collapsed on the ground, crying out to God expressing my anger and frustration with the constant nos. God gracefully allowed me to vent all of this and after a few moments, he gently brought me back to him. I stood up and I felt Jesus’s calm embrace, along with his reminder that just a few weeks prior, in an unusually intimate time of prayer and communion with him, he had definitively and categorically promised me that he would be with me and with me family through the entire journey I am now on. He told me that nothing had changed about that. He is still right beside me through it all. Just because the path is harder than I’d assumed it would be or would like it to be, he never wavers in his promise to me that he will guide me through it and care for my family in the meantime.