To Keep a Promise

30 years ago Nancy (now) Brinker promised her sister the world. At a time when people thought breast cancer was contagious, her sister, Susan, died of it. On her death bed she asked Nancy to make it so her death was not meaningless, and Nancy promised to find a cure. She launched the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation with just $200 and a shoebox full of contacts. Now, 30 years later, her foundation has assets of 1.5 billion and is the largest non-profit non-governmental source of funding for breast cancer research. Due partly to research funded by the foundation, survival rates have risen to %98 in developed countries. The reality today speaks volumes about Susan's relationship with her sister, but it is most eloquent about Nancy. She is a woman of incredible vision and drive.

God saw the relationship between divinity and creation crack and crumble in an instant one day in a garden, and promised to redeem it. Over the millennia in countless ways God has been up to fulfilling the promise. Now, through Christ, the tension that seems so natural between being human and being divine is an unnecessary burden to bear, we can lay it down and be finally truly free, not that we become gods, but that we participate and harmonize with the divine in such a way that we begin to share divine characteristics and properties. The ancient doctors of the Christian faith called it "theosis," from "theo," the Greek word for God.

Nancy shares a bit of that theosis, in that she also dreamed big for the good of creation, and made it happen. Hats off to a powerful woman who shows us something of what God is like.