Go out to all the world and tell the Good News. // Mark 16:15
My dad was diagnosed with brain cancer last September and died in January. We as a family spent five beautiful and painful months walking beside him on his journey to eternal glory.
During that time, I was watching to see if I would need to cancel any previously scheduled speaking engagements. I ended up having just enough time between the funeral and the first conference to keep my commitment.
When I stood in front of the crowd at my first talk that morning, I had no plans to talk about everything we had just endured. That’s not what you agreed to talk about, I told myself. That’s not what these women came to hear.
But I also knew I had just been through something we all fear so much, and that I had felt God’s grace and mercy and faithfulness to me and to our family every step of the way. I had to tell the good news.
“Go out to all the world and tell the Good News,” says today’s Psalm Response (Mark 16:15), “[f]or steadfast is his kindness for us, and the fidelity of the LORD endures forever (Psalm 117:2).”
What I needed to share was this reality: what God says He will do, He has done. For me, for my siblings and our mom and our families, the peace and consolation that the Lord offers was so present to us in those hard, sad days that we could not help but declare His goodness.
When my dad was first diagnosed, I was fearful. I was afraid of losing my dad and also, of losing my faith. What if this death, which I knew would come, would be more than I could bear? What if this loss rocked me to my core? But it was not, and it did not. And only because of the goodness of God.
What has God done for you? Do you see His goodness? Do you see the kindness He has shown you and the faithful that endures? Go share it with the world! This is the Good News the world so desperately needs to hear.
Rachel Balducci is a writer and speaker and co-host of the Gist on CatholicTV. She has a Masters degree from the Grady School of Journalism at the University of Georgia and teaches at Augusta University and is working on her doctorate in Religion at the University of Georgia. She and her husband Paul have five sons and one daughter and are part of an intentional Christian community in Augusta, Georgia. Find out more about her here.
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