The Other Side

Several years ago, in fact in April 2007, I was diagnosed with nasopharyngeal cancer. (You can find several posts on this site related to this journey of illness, treatment, and recovery). I recall that there were hundreds (maybe thousands), of people praying for my recovery. I received communications, usually emails from unknown individuals with promises of prayer and support. During 2007 and much of 2008, the prospect of a long healthy life was a distant, and not certain, expectation. The difficult experience of radiation treatments and chemotherapy sapped my body of its energy and vitality. I had lost about 45 pounds from a top weight of 169. At about 5 ft. 6 inches tall I was reduced to my teenage weight.

There were not many hopeful people. During the episodes of excruciating pain while attempting to swallow, and the loss of appetite during chemotherapy, I often wondered whether I would soon leave a widow and orphans.

Today, I experience good health with an active lifestyle, biking, jogging, and occasionally hiking.

About one year following my diagnosis, and while the light at the end of the tunnel of recovery beamed in the distance, I received a call from a dear friend, a young mentee, who informed me that she was diagnosed with liver cancer. Cheryl was young, late 30's, recently married and a devoted Christian. I first met Cheryl while I was a PhD student at Indiana State University. A teenage freshman from Chicago, I picked her up every Saturday morning to attend church and she usually spent the day at our home - having lunch and bonding with our young children, whom she adored. After her graduation, she returned to Chicago but we remained in touch, always asking about our children, and once coming to Orlando to visit after I had competed school and moved south. In spite of numerous chemo treatments, natural remedies, and the ardent prayers by her church, her family and friends, within a few months Cheryl passed away. Why?

Several weeks later, I sat in church and witnessed a testimony of praise from someone who claimed that her prayers were answered as she expressed her joy of recovery from illness. A few years after I listened to the pastor's wife tell the church how God had answered the prayers of her family as He had intervened in the miraculous healing of her son and later her own healing from cancer. and I could only think of Cheryl and the many other Cheryls I know whose survival was not honored, whose prayers were not answered.

How do parents and friends feel when they listen to those who claim that God answered their prayers, but whose hopes were dashed as their pleadings were not heard? The infant tormented by cancer who finally passes away? The wife who prays for God's intervention into the life and wellbeing of her husband who is then brutally killed on the job by a mass murder?

Their cry: "I prayed and he did not answer my prayer!"

How do we understand prayer? Is it about God or is it about us?

Does God pick and choose the ones he wants to answer?

Do we need to pray? Won't God just do his thing anyway?

So many questions!

Please share your thoughts!

Time for all things

(Written in 2020 but remained in the draft folder until today - December 4, 2025. After writing this post I unretired in 2022 to accept a request by the President of the University of the Southern Caribbean, Dr Colwick Wilson to be the Interim Provost at the USC. The interim title was soon changed and I agreed to stay on as the Provost for the next 4 years.)

There is a time for everything, and for me, it is a time to retire after 45 years as a graduate student teaching undergraduate students or as a full time college teacher. I have been blessed to have mentored thousands of students students in the basic and life sciences - chemistry, biology, human anatomy, and human physiology.. Here, I share an article published by the marketing and public relations department in my honor.

My journey started as a teenage high school instructor at Harmon High School in my island home of Tobago, Trinidad and Tobago. After leaving sixth form at Bishop’s High School I taught at Harmon High School, a Seventh-day Adventist high school, for two years before entering the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad. I completed a BSc. in Botany/Applied Botany before spending another three years teaching, first at Southern Academy, an SDA high school in San Fernando, Trinidad, before joining the faculty at Caribbean Union College (now University of the Southern Caribbean).
As a teenager, I had developed an intense love of music and participated in numerous musical events. Born with extraordinary vocal talent, I became a member of an elite choral group, Music Amateurs, and a vocal quartet, the Archer Quartet. My desire migrate to the United States was strongly influenced by my desire to further my education but forged by my desire to join the other members of the quartet who had one year earlier began their graduate degree programs at Andrews University, Berrien Springs, Michigan. After graduating from Andrews University in 1983, I was awarded a graduate fellowship to complete a PhD program in microbiology at Indiana State University. After spending almost 30 years at AdventHealth University, I retired as the Vice-President for Academic Administration and Academic Dean of Undergraduate Programs.

  
https://www.southerntidings.com/news/academic-dean-len-archer-retires/#