Summary: In his book Letter to a Man in a Fire, cancer survivor Reynolds Price responds to a letter from a young medical student named Jim, who has developed a life-threatening cancer. In his letter to Reynolds Price, Jim writes, "I want to believe in a God who cares...because I may meet him sooner than I had expected. I think I am at the point where I can accept the existence of God...but I can't yet believe God cares about me." [Reynolds Price, Letter to a Man in a Fire (New York: Scribner, 1999), 25.] In his struggle with the raging storm of cancer, this young man could have taken the words right out of the mouths of the disciples when they cried out to Jesus, "Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?" (Mk. 4:38) It is evening and the disciples are in the boat with Jesus. They are crossing the Sea of Galilee when a great storm arises. The boat is beaten by the wind and the waves; it is filling with water and ready to sink. All the while, Jesus is asleep in the stern untroubled by the storm, indifferent to their peril and unperturbed by their fear. These words are our words too: "Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?" When we consider the personal tragedies that people face every day and the global crises that plague our world, we may wonder if Jesus is asleep on the job. On Easter weekend a shooting spree in Tulsa, Oklahoma, killed three people and wounded two others. Apparently, the violence by two white men against these five randomly chosen black victims was racially motivated. It's been a particularly intense year for tornados in the Midwest where I live. People of all ages have died and a tremendous number of homes, schools, businesses and churches have been destroyed. A four year old shoots a three year old with a loaded gun; a stroke leaves a young father paralyzed; a child develops a brain tumor; a woman, after one too many beatings, flees an abusive spouse. These are the kinds of things that beat against our hopes and dreams and swamp our lives. "Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?"
