Paul Azinger

When golf champion Paul Azinger learned in the early 1990s that he had cancer, his reaction was not anger or self-pity. He said: “When something like this happens, you can scream, ‘Why me, God?’ Or you can do an about-face and run to God. That’s what I did.” Azinger realized that God had a plan for him. After chemotherapy and still facing weeks of radiation treatment, he told reporters, “This whole ordeal has been one of the greatest experiences of my life.....It has given me an opportunity to encourage and inspire a lot of people. It has taught me a lot. Azinger realized that even misfortune can be a way God helps us grow in understanding – and a way He uses us to help others. Some eighteen centuries ago, St. Irenaeus wrote: “It is not you who shape God. It is God who shapes you. If then, you are the work of God, await the hand of the artist, who does all things in due season.”