Jorge

"Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!"

[Jorge @jonugeorge]

@EmmanuelAcho So much joy 🤩

[Sola Media @solamediaorg]

Ben Sasse:

"One of the weird lines @timkellernyc used to say is, 'I hate this, but I would never want to go back to the prayer life I had before pancreatic cancer,' which I thought sounded pretty weird. . .But then I felt, what a blessing that I'm saying, 'Lord, come quickly, Maranatha. Thank you for all of the different things that I used to cling to that right now seem really, really trivial because they're actually really trivial.'"

@BenSasse

[Jorge @jonugeorge]

@NFL_DovKleiman Tony Romo

[Jorge @jonugeorge]

@RuralVoiceX Is this AI fake?

[Ben Sasse @BenSasse]

Friends-

This is a tough note to write, but since a bunch of you have started to suspect something, I’ll cut to the chase: Last week I was diagnosed with metastasized, stage-four pancreatic cancer, and am gonna die.

Advanced pancreatic is nasty stuff; it’s a death sentence. But I already had a death sentence before last week too — we all do.

I’m blessed with amazing siblings and half-a-dozen buddies that are genuinely brothers. As one of them put it, “Sure, you’re on the clock, but we’re all on the clock.” Death is a wicked thief, and the bastard pursues us all.

Still, I’ve got less time than I’d prefer. This is hard for someone wired to work and build, but harder still as a husband and a dad. I can’t begin to describe how great my people are. During the past year, as we’d temporarily stepped back from public life and built new family rhythms, Melissa and I have grown even closer — and that on top of three decades of the best friend a man could ever have. Seven months ago, Corrie was commissioned into the Air Force and she’s off at instrument and multi-engine rounds of flight school. Last week, Alex kicked butt graduating from college a semester early even while teaching gen chem, organic, and physics (she’s a freak). This summer, 14-year-old Breck started learning to drive. (Okay, we’ve been driving off-book for six years — but now we’ve got paper to make it street-legal.) I couldn’t be more grateful to constantly get to bear-hug this motley crew of sinners and saints.

There’s not a good time to tell your peeps you’re now marching to the beat of a faster drummer — but the season of advent isn’t the worst. As a Christian, the weeks running up to Christmas are a time to orient our hearts toward the hope of what’s to come.

Not an abstract hope in fanciful human goodness; not hope in vague hallmark-sappy spirituality; not a bootstrapped hope in our own strength (what foolishness is the evaporating-muscle I once prided myself in). Nope — often we lazily say “hope” when what we mean is “optimism.” To be clear, optimism is great, and it’s absolutely necessary, but it’s insufficient. It’s not the kinda thing that holds up when you tell your daughters you’re not going to walk them down the aisle. Nor telling your mom and pops they’re gonna bury their son.

A well-lived life demands more reality — stiffer stuff. That’s why, during advent, even while still walking in darkness, we shout our hope — often properly with a gravelly voice soldiering through tears.

Such is the calling of the pilgrim. Those who know ourselves to need a Physician should dang well look forward to enduring beauty and eventual fulfillment. That is, we hope in a real Deliverer — a rescuing God, born at a real time, in a real place. But the eternal city — with foundations and without cancer — is not yet.

Remembering Isaiah’s prophecies of what’s to come doesn’t dull the pain of current sufferings. But it does put it in eternity’s perspective:
“When we've been there 10,000 years…We've no less days to sing God's praise.”

I’ll have more to say. I’m not going down without a fight. One sub-part of God’s grace is found in the jawdropping advances science has made the past few years in immunotherapy and more. Death and dying aren’t the same — the process of dying is still something to be lived. We’re zealously embracing a lot of gallows humor in our house, and I’ve pledged to do my part to run through the irreverent tape.

But for now, as our family faces the reality of treatments, but more importantly as we celebrate Christmas, we wish you peace: “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned….For to us a son is given” (Isaiah 9).

With great gratitude, and with gravelly-but-hopeful voices,
Ben — and the Sasses

[Jorge @jonugeorge]

@thepointsguy @AmericanAir status is really not what it used to be. Im exec platinum and not putting in ANY effort to keep it. Totally regret the time I put in to get it last year. #lessonslearned

[Jorge @jonugeorge]

@AdamSchefter Gosh this guy is awesome

[Jorge @jonugeorge]

@megbasham The church has responded. Take a look at their statement.

[Jorge @jonugeorge]

@MattooShashank @grok is this real?

[Laura Hudson 🇨🇦 @latterdaylaura]

“I understood my purpose”

What a beautiful way to look at parenthood

[Jorge @jonugeorge]

@dallascowboys @Invisalign Yo, plz pay Micah. Thx

[Jorge @jonugeorge]

@kale_abe @TheTennisLetter Is he better?

[Popeyes @Popeyes]

pope yes

[Jorge @jonugeorge]

@stats_feed Why India only 20?!!

[Jorge @jonugeorge]

@EmmanuelAcho Agree. People shouldn’t take any joy in that

[Jorge @jonugeorge]

@EmmanuelAcho It brings me no joy to say this… Nico should be fired

[Jorge @jonugeorge]

@bryanblackbee @Yannick_Veys @Davidjpark96 Looks like the $25 AI empire could remain on moms credit card

[Jorge @jonugeorge]

@NBA Nico Harris would call him fat and trade him in the middle of the night

[Jorge @jonugeorge]

@theeclecticjoe @KiddMuse_ Michael finely

[Jorge @jonugeorge]

@dallasmavs @luka7doncic forever and ever babe 😭😭😭