A friend of mine, Ginny, from Ohio is dying. The news came in an email today from a former supervisor of mine back in my ministry days…

I know you would want to know that our Parish Nurse shared some bad news with me last week about Ginny… Seems that after 13 cancer free years (praise God!) her cancer has returned. Sue said the prognosis is very poor. Cancer is in many places including her liver.

I know you were all involved in praying faithfully for Ginny and it is time to pray again.

That item about praying faithfully for Ginny refers to the time in 1993 when I joined the staff of the church and went through the membership classes. They broke us up into small groups in that class, and Ginny happened to be in mine. At our first meeting she said that she was a cancer survivor and at the last meeting informed us that her cancer had returned. I, along with some others from the class, asked if it would be okay if we met once a week to pray for her. She was a bit resistant but finally said okay, and pray we did, for months.

When Ginny went into the hospital for a bone marrow transplant, we continued praying without her. It was a while before we could visit her there. As I recall she was in a secluded, sterile environment.

Our little prayer group met one final time when Ginny was cancer free and we rejoiced and asked God to grant her many years of life with her husband and two sons. Ginny always hugged me instead of saying hello. No words were necessary after those first few months of prayer. On the day her son was confirmed, I got to ask him the membership questions and afterward, Ginny and I shed a few tears of joy in each others’ presence, joy that she was there to see this moment. Then she gave me a hug.

It seems to me that our request for many years was granted, but I have to admit, I was hoping that Ginny’s cancer would never return.

After reading my friend’s email, I had to take a walk. It’s getting pretty cold here finally but I didn’t really feel it. I was thinking about Ginny and that group of people, trying to reacapture the eight faces and names. And I was thinking about my schedule for the next couple of weeks, which is fairly full, and how I can get out of delivering the mail and everything else for a couple of days to make a trip to Ohio. It sounds like time is short.