God has given us the most wonderful Christmas gift of all – the joy of our Savior. May his abiding joy be yours this season!
Tomorrow is Christmas Eve and I hope the joy of this glorious season is filling your heart like it’s filling mine. Hi, I’m Joni Eareckson Tada and sing this with me, would you?
(Joni sings:)
O little town of Bethlehem
How still we see thee lie!
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep
The silent stars go by;
Yet in thy dark streets shineth
The everlasting Light.
The hopes, the fears of all the years
Are met in thee tonight.
What a beautiful, beautiful hymn. You know, I’ve got so many joyful memories of past Christmas weekends that fill my heart. Let me tell you about one in particular. It was the Friday before Christmas back in 1968. I was still rather new to my wheelchair, what with my accident having occurred only 18 months earlier. And although I was out of the hospital and at home, I was feeling so sad. Many months had passed and things weren’t getting easy; I was only 18 months into the life I was going to be living with quadriplegia and I was already tired of being paralyzed. But on the Friday evening before Christmas, a few friends dropped by my house that night. They knew I was struggling, and they suggested the best tonic. They said, “Joni, we know how much you love to sing, so we are going to pile you into the front seat of the car and let’s all drive down to the old Pennsylvania Railway Station in Baltimore City. We’re going to sing Christmas carols.” “What?!” I said in disbelief. “Sure,” they said, “C’mon, in that big old railway station, the acoustics are going to be great!”
So they transferred me out of my wheelchair and put me into my friend’s ’65 Camaro and off we drove downtown. It was late, it was snowing, and the red and green lights of the stop signs and all the snowflakes made it feel so wonderfully like Christmas. I was starting to get excited. We arrived; they put me back in my wheelchair and wheeled me into that big old empty building. It was late and we sang, all of it echoing beautifully off the domed ceiling. And that’s when suddenly a uniformed guard appeared. “Okay, enough of this,” he said. “This isn’t a Christmas party or a church. You young people need to clear out. Get going. And you…” he pointed at me in my wheelchair, “you put that wheelchair back where you found it, missy!” I gave him a strange look. I said, “Sir, I wish I could get out of it, but I can’t. It’s mine.” The guard got angry. “Don’t you sass me. Now you put that wheelchair back!” “Honestly,” I said, “I’m paralyzed!” All of a sudden he turned red. “Okay, well, just get out of here. All of you!”
I can’t begin to tell you how we laughed that night all the way home. And in between the laughing, tears filled my eyes. The joy of the Lord was bursting my heart. No, I did not get healed that Christmas of 1968. But in the eyes of a guard in the railway station, I was just a normal, energetic teenager hanging out with her friends. And that, right there in that place and time, God gave me the most wonderful Christmas gift: the gift of the joy of my Savior in my little world. Merry Christmas from all of us at Joni and Friends and may God’s joy be yours this weekend as well.
© Joni and Friends