Amen—because even if we take heart in percentages when we should not, we know that the long-range certainty (unless Christ returns first) is 100 percent fatality. It's disconcerting to attain the label "cardiac patient." (Who, me? You must mean someone else.) But here's Chapter 40 of Isaiah: "All flesh is grass. . . . The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever."

Bottom line: If you look in the mirror and see yourself as anything other than a future cardiac, or cancer, or something-else patient, you're fooling yourself.

Piper writes, "You will waste your cancer if you think that beating cancer means staying alive rather than cherishing Christ. . . . You will waste your cancer if you spend too much time reading about cancer and not enough time reading about God." Amen. There was no need to learn a lot about my chest being cut open and my heart temporarily stopped, since no one would be asking my advice during the three-hour operation. The news we can use is the good news of Christ, because our attitude toward that affects everything.

One of Piper's most intriguing comments: "You will waste your cancer if you treat sin as casually as before. . . . Pride, greed, lust, hatred, impatience, laziness, procrastination. . . . All these things are worse enemies than cancer. Don't waste the power of cancer to crush these foes. Let the presence of eternity make the sins of time look as futile as they really are." True: Illness can be what the Doctor orders to focus our attention.

Piper concludes, "You will waste your cancer if you fail to use it as a means of witness to the truth and glory of Christ. Here is a golden opportunity to show that He is worth more than life. Don't waste it." Amen. Christ changed my life a third of a century ago. Every year since then has been a gift. Thank you, Lord.