Terry's Legacy

This morning a substantial team of children, women and men from my former congregation, St. Paul's, will take part in the Terry Fox Run, walk, and ride. A fair number of them will be in worship, proudly wearing their tee-shirts. The Bowmanville event will be one of hundreds, perhaps thousands across the country, including those orchestrated by schools during the week. This is the 34th Terry Fox Run, so those children will have learned about this heroic Canadian long after his death. Lots of us remember his cross-country Marathon of Hope which began in St. John's, Newfoundland, and came to an abrupt end in Thunder Bay, Ontario. Terry ran with a prosthetic limb after losing a portion of one leg to cancer. It was extraordinary that he ran the equivalent of a marathon a day despite his hitching gait. His sojourn stopped because of a recurrence of his cancer and he died not long afterward.

This annual event must be bittersweet for the Fox family. They will feel the pride of his legacy -- more than $600 million has been raised for cancer research. We're told that the cancer which killed Terry is now treatable and beatable because of advances in treatment. They can celebrate this knowing that his courage and loss contributed to the breakthrough.

So many of us have been affected by cancer in our families. It's hard to imagine that any of us haven't. How many times have we prayed for those dealing with cancer in our worship services? How many funerals and memorials have we attended where we upheld our Christian hope in the face of death by cancer?

We can continue to pray for those we love, and that research will address more and more forms of cancer in the days ahead.

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