Hope Harvested
After finding out my nine-year-old daughter might not live to see her 14th birthday, I desperately turned to Scripture BY STEVE PAVEY
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ow to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us …” (Ephesians 3:20). Those words were directed at everyone in the conference room—but not me. God wouldn’t change laws of nature for my daughter. These thoughts churned in my mind as Commissioner William Francis preached this verse with conviction five years ago at the Ontario Central-East Division’s Thanksgiving “Harvest of Hope” Congress. One week prior, I received a phone call with a death sentence for our nineyear-old daughter, Kayla. “She most likely has less than five years to live,” the doctor coldly explained. “Even if she survives this round of cancer, malignant melanoma moves fast, is almost impossible to track and can come back any time in her life—there’s no ‘five years 20 I October 2013 I Salvationist
Kayla Pavey shows her resilient spirit following a cancer operation in October 2008
and you’re free.’ ” “It’s hopeless,” I thought. I realize we live in a broken world. God doesn’t deliver everyone from illness and sometimes it painfully takes time for hope to be harvested through and after death. What would Kayla’s outcome be? Following Kayla’s diagnosis, Major David Pearo, our corps officer at Richmond Hill Community Church, Ont., told us, “Doctors had their say, but God hasn’t spoken yet.” He was right, because God eventually spoke. First, our prayers were answered when Kayla received her diagnosis with a calm and hopeful reaction. Then things kept turning out differently from what the doctors forecasted—our daughter did not experience any pain from her surgeries; she wasn’t bothered by her chemotherapy, which she did while completing schoolwork; and looking at her resilient spirit, it was “business as usual.”
Then God spoke through his Word. I journeyed through the Bible and focused on Psalm 91. I wondered if God was showing me through Kayla’s hopeful spirit, easy recovery and this timely Scripture that “ ‘Because they love me,’ says the Lord, ‘I will rescue them; I will protect them, for they acknowledge my name. They will call on me, and I will answer them; I will be with them in trouble, I will deliver them and honour them’ ” (Psalm 91:14-15). Telling no one, I prayed, asking God to show me Psalm 91 somewhere in the next few days as a sign that I wasn’t just experiencing wishful thinking. The next day, while attending a music teachers’ conference, a public school band teacher began a workshop with his Grade 7/8 band playing A Mighty Fortress, reflected in Psalm 91:2. Two days later during our worship service, Major Beth Pearo, our corps officer, gave