Cowboys owner Jerry Jones overcame Stage 4 cancer

I grew up in Houston, where being a Dallas Cowboys fan is an unpardonable sin. When we moved to Dallas in 1998, I was eventually converted. I have been privileged to know Roger Staubach, Troy Aikman, and several other Cowboys greats. I have talked with Jerry Jones, the team’s owner and general manager, on a few occasions as well. He was always unfailingly polite, belying his polarizing public image.

But as much as I thought I knew his life story, I didn’t know this: he battled stage 4 melanoma for a decade.

Yesterday we learned that Mr. Jones was diagnosed in June 2010. He underwent two lung surgeries and two lymph node surgeries and says his life was saved by an experimental trial and a drug called Programmed Cell Death Protein 1.

Unlike the Cowboys owner, about 8,430 Americans are expected to die of melanoma this year. In total, more than 618,000 people will die from cancer in 2025. This disease is highly personal for me: my mother died of cancer; our oldest son and youngest grandson are cancer survivors; I have dealt with numerous skin cancers over the years as well. Two of my dear friends are battling cancer right now.

Statistically, it is likely that you have the disease, have survived it, and/or know someone in the first two categories. When we face cancer or other challenging conditions and circumstances, trusting God in hard places can be hard to do.

Why is this?

Meteor rips through Georgia roof

The Perseid meteor shower reached its peak this week. When conditions are good, observers can see up to fifty meteors an hour. This is impressive, but only a tiny fraction of what’s around us: an estimated twenty-five million meteoroids enter Earth’s atmosphere every day. One meteorite that ripped through the roof of a Georgia home earlier this summer is estimated to be twenty million years older than our planet.

As much as we know about our universe, there is so much we do not. Astronomers recently discovered the most massive black hole ever detected, as big as thirty-six billion solar masses. They also found a powerful mystery object in a nearby galaxy that could be a brand new astrophysical object unlike anything astronomers have seen before.

Cosmologists cannot agree on how fast the universe is expanding, which means they cannot calculate an exact age for the universe or be certain of its exact size. These are basic facts about which our greatest astronomers are unsure.

By contrast, the Creator of the cosmos suffers from no such limitations. Jeremiah said to him, “Ah, Lord Gᴏᴅ! It is you who have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and by your outstretched arm! Nothing is too hard for you” (Jeremiah 32:17). The Almighty One agreed: “The word of the Lᴏʀᴅ came to Jeremiah: ‘Behold, I am the Lᴏʀᴅ, the God of all flesh. Is anything too hard for me?’” (vv. 26–27).

In light of what we know about the immensity and magnificence of his creation, how would you answer his question?

“He has delivered me from every trouble”

When we remember all that God has done, we are encouraged to trust him for what he is doing and for what he will do.

This fact was illuminated for me recently when I read Psalm 54, David’s response when enemies exposed his position to King Saul and threatened his life (cf. 1 Samuel 23:19; 26:1). He cried out for God to “save me by your name, and vindicate me by your might” (Psalm 54:1).

Why did he believe God could deliver him from the king, the mightiest person in the nation?

Because of what God had done for him in the past: “He has delivered me from every trouble” (v. 7, my emphasis). He could therefore trust him in the present: “Behold, God is my helper; the Lord is the upholder of my life” (v. 4, my emphases). And he could trust him with the future: “He will return the evil to my enemies” (v. 5).

David’s prayer is in the Bible so we can pray it today. But if you’re like me, trusting God in hard places is harder than it should be.

When God doesn’t do what we want

I grew up not going to church. As a result, my image of God was shaped by what I learned in school about the Greek and Roman gods. This was not helpful.

In Rome Before Rome: The Legends That Shaped the Romans, Oxford historian Philip Matyszak reports:

From a modern perspective, it seems strange that the often-immoral Romans enjoyed the support of the gods, but Roman gods were not particularly moral beings themselves. They regarded piety in terms of service to themselves rather than the toeing of an ethical line.

British historian Guy de la Bédoyère adds in Gladius: The World of the Roman Soldier:

Roman religion was primarily transactional. A soldier, or a civilian, typically wanted a service or support from a deity and in return promised to fulfill a vow in the form of a sacrifice or gift recorded in a dedication. The same relationship operated between the gods and the state or the army unit.

We don’t have to be Romans to relate to God as they did. Their transactional religion was reflective of the fallen human condition by which we seek to use God in our desire to be our own god (Genesis 3:5). As a result, when the Lord does not do what we want, we can feel justified in refusing to do what he wants or trusting him for what is best.

But when we stop to remember all he has done for us, we are encouraged to trust and serve him, whatever the cost.

“The one infinite, wise, holy, and merciful Lord”

The Polish priest St. Maximilian Kolbe died on this day in 1941. Sent by the Nazis to Auschwitz, he volunteered to die in place of a fellow prisoner, knowing this meant he would be shut up in a starvation bunker, with no water or food, where prisoners perished in horrible agony.

What empowered such courage?

In a letter, St. Kolbe said of his Lord,

God himself is the one infinite, wise, holy, and merciful Lord, our Creator and our Father, the beginning and the end, wisdom power, and love—God is all these. Anything that is apart from God has value only in so far as it is brought back to him, the Founder of all things, the Redeemer of mankind, the final end of all creation. . . .

Let us love him above all, our most loving heavenly Father, and let our obedience be a sign of his perfect love, especially when we have to sacrifice our own wills in the process.

Visitors today to the starvation bunker where St. Kolbe was executed find on its floor, next to a large spray of fresh flowers, a steady flame. It is burning today. It will burn forever.

If you were a prisoner for whom Someone died, how would you respond to such grace?

Quote for the day:

“The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely, or unhappy is to go outside.” —Anne Frank

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