THINK ABOUT IT 10-10-24
Although I’ve read this story several times I am blessed every time I read it again. Perhaps it will help you to read it today. HDS
I think the best illustration for these verses comes from Joni Eareckson Tada. One hot July afternoon in 1967, she dove into a shallow lake and fractured her spinal cord, leaving her as a quadriplegic, paralyzed from the neck down, unable to use her hands or legs. She says, “Lying in my hospital bed, I tried desperately to make sense of the horrible turn of events. I begged friends to assist me in suicide. Slit my wrists, dump pills down my throat, anything to end my misery!”. Her friends wouldn’t do it. She says she realized that she was too helpless even to die on her own.
She adds, “I had endured long surgeries to shave down the bony prominences on my back, and it was a long recovery. I had lost a great deal of weight. And for almost three weeks I was forced to lie facedown on what’s called a Stryker frame—a long, flat canvas sandwich where they put you faceup for three hours and then strap another piece of canvas on you and flip you facedown to lie there for another three hours.
Trapped facedown, staring at the floor hour after hour, my thoughts grew dark and hopeless. All I could think was, ‘Great, God. Way to go. I’m a brand-new Christian. This is the way you treat your new Christians? I’m young in the faith. I prayed for a closer walk with you. If this is your idea of an answer to prayer, I am never going to trust you with another prayer again. I can’t believe that I have to lie facedown and do nothing but count the tiles on the floor on this stupid torture rack. I hate my existence.’”
One night, one of her closest friends, Cindy, blurted out, “Joni, you aren’t the only one. Jesus knows how you feel—why, he was paralyzed too.” Joni glared at her. “What? What are you talking about?” Cindy continued, “It’s true. Remember, he was nailed on a cross. His back was raw from beatings, and he must have yearned for a way to move to change positions, or shift his weight. But he couldn’t. He was paralyzed by the nails.”
The thought intrigued Joni and God became incredibly close to her. She says, “I had no other identity but God, and gradually he became enough. The first months and years she was obsessed trying to find out what God was trying to teach her. Secretly, she hoped that by figuring out God’s ideas, she could learn her lesson and then He’d heal her. She went to the book of Job and strangely she could not find answers to the ‘Why’ tragedies anywhere in the book of Job. But Job clung to God regardless, and God rewarded Him. “Is that what God wants?” she wondered. Her focus changed from demanding an explanation from God to humbly depending on Him. “Okay, I am paralyzed. It’s terrible. I don’t like it. But can God use me, paralyzed? Can I, paralyzed, still worship God and love him? He began to teach me that I could.”
After two years, Joni learned to maneuver a motorized wheelchair. She eventually got married. She received tons of support from friends and family. She learned how to drive and has her own van with customized controls. She can paint masterfully by holding the paintbrush in her teeth. Today, almost 43 years later, she speaks all around the world, started a ministry called Joni and friends, which ministers to people in the disability community. She still struggles, but like Paul, she is sorrowful, but always rejoicing (2 Cor.6:10).
She adds, “Do you know who the truly handicapped people are? They are the ones—and many of them are Christians—who hear the alarm clock go off at 7:tr30 in the morning, throw back the covers, jump out of bed, take a quick shower, choke down breakfast, and zoom out the front door. They do all this on automatic pilot without stopping once to acknowledge their Creator, their great God who gives them life and strength each day. Christian, if you live that way, do you know that James 4:6 says God opposes you? “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”
She says, “I have hope for the future now. The Bible speaks of our bodies being ‘glorified’ in heaven. In high school that always seemed a hazy, foreign concept to me. But I now realize that I will be healed. I haven’t been cheated out of being a complete person—I’m just going through a forty or fifty year delay, and God stays with me even through that. I now know the meaning of being ‘glorified.’ It’s the time, after my death here, when I’ll be on my feet dancing.
And one day I’m going to leave this wheelchair behind. I cannot wait. I may have suffered with Christ on earth, but one day in heaven I’m going to reign with him. I may have tasted the pains of living on this planet, but one day I’m going to eat from the tree of life in the pleasure of heaven, and it’s all going to happen in the twinkling of an eye. The Lord’s overcoming of this world will be the lifting of the curtain on our five senses, and we shall see him and we shall be like him, and we shall see the whole universe in plain sight.
I think at first the shock of the joy that will come from reveling in the waterfall of love and pleasure that is the Trinity may burn with a brilliant newness of being glorified, but in the next instant we will be at peace. We will be drenched with delight. We will feel at home as though it were always this way, as though we were born for such a place— because we were!
For I sure hope I can bring this wheelchair to heaven. Now, I know that’s not theologically correct. But I hope to bring it and put it in a little corner of heaven, and then in my new, perfect, glorified body, standing on grateful glorified legs, I’ll stand next to my Savior, holding his nail-pierced hands. I’ll say, ‘Thank you, Jesus,’ and he will know that I mean it, because he knows me. He’ll recognize me from the fellowship we’re now sharing in his sufferings. And I will say, ‘Jesus, do you see that wheelchair? You were right when you said that in this world we would have trouble, because that thing was a lot of trouble. But the weaker I was in that thing, the harder I leaned on you. And the harder I leaned on you, the stronger I discovered you to be. It never would have happened had you not given me the bruising of the blessing of that wheelchair.’
Then the real ticker-tape parade of praise will begin. And all of earth will join in the party. And at that point Christ will open up our eyes to the great fountain of joy in his heart for us beyond all that we ever experienced on earth. And when we’re able to stop laughing and crying, the Lord Jesus really will wipe away our tears. I find it so poignant that finally at the point when I do have the use of my arms to wipe away my own tears, I won’t have to, because God will.”
I am sure Joni has envied a lot of people for a lot of things in her life. But as I hear her story, I am so incredibly jealous of her relationship with Christ. And in God’s dictionary, I am sure next to 1 Peter 1:6-9 there is a little footnote that says, “See Joni Eareckson Tada.” I pray through the power of the Holy Spirit, He can say the same thing about us as well.
David Stone
Lakeway Baptist Church
5801 FM 1960 E
Humble, TX. 77346
