Hope Beyond Cure
CATHEDRAL NEWSLETTER - 11 April 2024
Friends in Christ, cancer – if all types are grouped together – is the leading cause of death in Australia. (If you take them separately, such as lung, breast, prostate, pancreatic, etc., then heart disease tops them on their own.)
But everyone knows someone who is impacted by cancer. And—to state the obvious—not everyone gets better from a cancer diagnosis.
In that space, Dave McDonald's book Hope Beyond Cure has become the Christian book I give away more than any other, even ten years after publication. At just 90 pages, his book is clear and gripping.
Today I am posting a copy to a young man in his 20s, just diagnosed with a bad leukaemia.
Dave has been a church planter and pastor and was ACT Brumbies chaplain. He was diagnosed with incurable lung cancer in late 2011, and although he had a good remission, cancer has returned. And his wife is a doctor. So he knows what he is talking about from many different angles.
It’s a superb book. Dave writes
I knew people who’d had cancer. I’d visited people at their bedsides and watched them waste away. I’d witnessed the brutality of the treatments. I’d prayed with people and seen some recover, but I’d seen others die. I’d lost friends and relatives to this cruel and indiscriminate disease. I’d conducted funerals and wept with those who mourned. I thought I knew something about cancer, but I couldn’t appreciate the multiple layers of pain and loss it creates until I began to experience these things myself. [p.26]
I can relate to everything Dave writes there, except the personal experience in the last line. But his book goes as close to anything I’ve read in helping us who’ve never been there understand those who have.
It’s brutally honest. It’s short and realistic. It doesn’t pretend to have all the answers. But it delivers what it promises: hope beyond cure.
Perhaps it won’t surprise you to discover Dave points clearly, winsomely, compassionately, but uncompromisingly towards the gospel of Jesus Christ, crucified and risen as the only source of hope for life beyond death.
And he explains the reasons why he found that hope to remain true, both objectively and subjectively, when cancer threw everything he knew up in the air. His treatment of the resurrection basis for hope is brief though brilliant.
As one of the endorsers writes—basically outlining the contents—it starts with the words tumour and incurable. And eventually Dave transforms those first horrible words into new words: faith, hope and love.
This book has been endorsed by a New Testament professor from Chicago, the West Australian of the year (a professor of medicine), a Sydney oncologist, the then head coach of one Super Rugby team, and the CEO of another. It also includes the endorsement of one of my best ministry friends, who lost his wife from cancer aged just 51.
To conclude, here are two extracts among the many I found helpful.
Explaining the parable of the healing of the paralysed man from Mark 2:3-12, Dave writes,
I assume that the forgiveness of this man’s sins was the last thing his four friends had on their minds. They had either seen Jesus healing serious illnesses and disabilities or heard about his ability to do so, so they did all they could to make sure their friend got a piece of the action. They must have been dismayed when all Jesus did was forgive his sins—what a let down! But Jesus had given him something far better. Forgiveness is the only gateway to deep healing that lasts forever. One action—healing the paralysis—lasted only a few years, until he died. The other—forgiveness—lasted beyond death for eternity. (p. 43)
What a sentence to treasure: “Forgiveness is the only gateway to deep healing that lasts forever.”
Lastly, listen to Dave’s closing and humble appeal:
You might be thinking that I’m somehow different from you—that I have faith and you don’t. Perhaps you even wish you had my faith. But it’s not my faith that matters—it’s who and what I’ve put my faith in. There’s nothing remarkable about my faith. Sometimes it’s weak and sometimes it wavers. But Jesus is not weak and Jesus never wavers. He can be trusted. (p. 88)
[You can purchase Hope Beyond Cure as a print or ebook from Matthias Media here.]
Warmly in Christ,
Sandy Grant
Dean of Sydney