Last Tuesday Ben Sasse, age 53, wrote a “Letter to America” announcing that he had been diagnosed with stage-four pancreatic cancer. Sasse served as a Republican Senator from Nebraska from 2015-2023.
He resigned from the Senate in 2023 to become the president of the University of Florida. The following year, he resigned from that position to spend more time at home, citing his wife Melissa’s significant health issues. She had been suffering from severe epilepsy and some memory problems. In 2007 she had suffered an aneurysm and multiple strokes, but had made a strong recovery. They have three children.
Ben Sasse has a strong Christian faith, as is clear in the letter below. He was raised in the Lutheran Church (LCMS). Later he joined the Presbyterian Church (PCA). He was the author of two books: The Vanishing American Adult (2017) and Them: Why We Hate Each Other—and How to Heal (2018).
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Letter to America, by Ben Sasse, December 23, 2025 (edited):
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 I am going to die.
Advanced pancreatic is nasty stuff. It is 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 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 flight school. Last week, Alex graduated from college a semester early even while teaching chemistry and physics. This summer, 14-year-old Breck started learning to drive. I couldn’t be more grateful to constantly get to bear-hug this motley crew of sinners and saints.
There is no good time to have to tell them you are 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.
This is 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 was the pride I once had in my now evaporating-muscle). 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 kind of thing that holds up when you tell your daughters you’re not going to walk them down the aisle. Nor when telling your mom and pops they’re going to 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 with a gravelly voice soldiering through tears.
Such is the calling of the pilgrim. Those who know ourselves to need a Physician should 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 jaw dropping 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.
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
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Romans 14:7-9 — For none of us lives for ourselves alone, and none of us dies for ourselves alone. If we live, we live for the Lord; and if we die, we die for the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord. For this very reason, Christ died and returned to life so that he might be the Lord of both the dead and the living.
Philippians 1:20-21 — I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now, as always, Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.
I Thessalonians 4:13 — Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope.
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Eternal God, we, who live all our years under a death sentence, lift up our hearts to you in hope. We, whose hearts and flesh will fail us, are trusting in your love. In you, O Lord, are met all our hopes and dreams; and though our days dwindle, and our life’s glory is as a fading flower, we are safe in your hands. At the end, O God, prepare our spirits for a change of worlds, and give us rest in the Everlasting Arms; though Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
–Joseph Fort Newton (1880-1950), Baptist minister.
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