In August 1998, my friend Johann was diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer. She was given 3 to 5 years to live. After radical surgery and 9 rounds of chemotherapy, she was sure she had beaten it. But 15 months later the cancer was back and worse – Another surgery, and 6 more rounds of chemo. Her hair fell out again, but this time the treatment didn’t work. So her doctors sent her to Houston for additional help. But they told her to go home and live out what little time she had left; there wasn’t anything they could do.

With six children, nine grandchildren, and a son serving as a missionary, Johann felt that her work wasn’t done. She wanted to live, but her faith and her will to fight were weakening. She began to wonder if God was hearing her prayers at all.

Then one morning she received a phone call. The caller was a man she’d never met before. His name was Neal A. Maxwell.

“I’ve heard,” he said, “that you have cancer, and that you’re having a few struggles – and I just wanted to talk with you. Is that okay?”

He went on to share some of his own experiences, and several powerful verses of scripture.

“He was so kind. He never preached to me,” she said. And as she spoke with him, she said, “It felt as though the Lord Himself was on the telephone with me.”

When he asked if he and others could pray for her, she could scarcely answer, so deeply was she touched.

“We are going to pray,” he said, “that your doctors will be blessed, and know the best treatment for you.”

Well, the spirit of the Lord came upon Johann, and her flagging faith in a loving Father in Heaven was renewed and returned. The doctors did find an experimental treatment, and today Johann is closer to the Lord than ever before – still alive, and more importantly, still living and determined to see her last missionary son come home.

Now, why do I tell you that story? – Because in Matthew 5 Jesus said to His disciples, “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father [which is] in Heaven.” (Matthew 5:16) And then in the next chapter He said, “… when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth.” (Matthew 6:3)

So are our good works supposed to be seen or not? Well, in this darkened world of lost souls, Jesus is that light we hold up. His true disciples seek out the poor and the suffering, and they hold up Christ like a beacon before those people, and they beckon them to come to Him. But note it: As they are holding Christ up, those disciples are looking up to Him also with reverence and awe. They are not looking admiringly down at themselves and their pose. They forgot themselves.

Consider this, and this is the point: To do alms for the poor so carefully that our left hand doesn’t notice what our right hand did, not only requires that the world missed our part in the good deed, we missed it too.

And one more thing: In 1996, Neal Maxwell began his own ongoing battle for life against cancer. He knows first hand the weakest that a person can be, and still be alive.