David McElroy

Two weeks from today, a surgeon will cut me open and remove a lump from my left breast. Few things will focus your attention on what matters in life as quickly as finding out that you have cancer cells growing in your body.

Just a few weeks ago, I noticed a lump under the skin on the left side of my chest. It seemed to just show up without warning one day. After seeing several doctors in the time since then, I found out Thursday that there were cancerous cells in that mass. It’s not the sort of thing that anyone expects, so there’s no way to be prepared for such news.

Breast cancer is about 100 times more common in women than in men. In men, it’s not as likely to spread to other parts of the body as the female version of the disease is. I probably have a greater risk of being killed in a car accident in the next five years than I do of having this thing kill me. Still, it’s one of those things that gets your attention and makes you think seriously about what matters to you.

Until last Tuesday, it still wasn’t striking me that it even could be cancer. I knew it was a theoretical possibility, but I just assumed it would be a benign cyst of some sort. I’ve known other people who’ve found such lumps and had to have surgery to have them removed, but they’ve always turned out to be benign. That’s what I assumed would be the case for me.

One of the lower-level doctors had come in to tell me that another doctor — the specialist — would be coming in to stick a needle into me to get some tissue for a biopsy. He left and I was alone in the room to wait. For some reason, I’ve never felt as alone as I felt in the minutes I waited. I can’t say it was surreal. Instead, it was hyper-real, as though I was more aware of everything than I’ve ever been.

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For weeks, we’ve been subjected to talk about God being responsible for Tim Tebow and the Denver Broncos winning football games. If God has been pulling strings for this young man who’s so open about his faith, He must have taken the night off Saturday, as the Patriots destroyed Denver 45-10.

This isn’t the first time Tebow has been humiliated in a big game, of course. Two years ago, in his last important game as a Florida Gator, he entered the SEC championship expecting to win and move his team to the Rose Bowl to play for the national championship. Instead, it was my university’s team — the Alabama Crimson Tide — that left Tebow crying on the sideline as the last of the game ticked away.

I don’t bring up these crushing losses in Tebow’s career to make fun of him. I admire his athletic ability and I admire him far more as a person. He’s tremendously talented on the football field at times, and he’s an even better human being off the field. What I’d like to know is why people can’t let the game be the game and real life be real life.

Too many Christians today are trying to make God into a spiritual Santa Claus. They want you to believe that if you follow God, everything is always going to go your way. This is just plain bad theology, but it’s been presented to shallow church audiences so much that they eat it up. What’s worse is that many people outside the church have picked up on the same strange belief. (We found out earlier this week that 43 percent of Americans believe that God has been causing Tebow and Denver to win.) Because of this, I don’t know that most modern Americans understand what the Gospel really is.

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More and more, we’re living in an age of digital books. I can’t say that I quite object to having books on a Kindle or an iPad, but I also can’t say that I embrace the trend away from “real” paper books. There’s something about the smell and feel of books that a digital file will never capture, at least not for me.

Partly because of how strongly I feel about books, this animation called “The Joy of Books” is a thing of real beauty to me. It presents books as having lives and character of their own. If you’ve ever had a favorite bookstore or library, you might find this short animation as magical as I do, both in its meaning and in its artistic whimsy.

Thanks to a reader for sharing it with me. It’s worth sharing — just as good books are worth sharing.