New & Improved St. Baldricks Link

So far my St. Baldrick’s numbers have been fairly weak, as one would expect given our current economic situation. However, I’ve decided to improve fund raising by altering my link. To the right you will now see my son, James. He has received special permission from his prep school to have a shaved head in support of the cause. So go ahead and scoot over there a drop a few bucks on his page.

Before you go, I should share with you my story about James, atheism, cancer, and intercessory prayer.

James is a very down-to-earth Christian. From time to time he has labeled himself an atheist, although he has also been baptized and preached at church about standing up for one’s faith. The one thing he really doesn’t believe in is the idea that an Almighty God reaches down to earth and breaks the laws of physics. He is very uncomfortable with praying for stuff to happen. He doesn’t believe in miracles. He is a Thomas Jefferson style believer.

When Mom and Dad moved to Mesa we thought Dad’s cancer was gone. We thought that his last course of chemo therapy had work remarkably (miraculously?) better than expected. We soon found out we were wrong. In fact, Dad went into the hospital and began to rapidly decline. It was a Wednesday afternoon, when I had to tell James and Kate that it looked like Dad would not live more than six months.

James would later tell me that he prayed that night. He prayed hard. He prayed that his grandpa would live for six months. There is a lot of tragedy just in that. He compromised his belief system to even by making such a prayer. But I can’t help but notice that he did not pray for Dad to be healed. He just prayed that God would let him live out the six month best case.

Dad died on Saturday.