Do you want to be a past or present-tense miracle?
Take a look at Joni and her friend Renée singing together here!
SHAUNA: Welcome to Joni Eareckson Tada: Sharing Hope. Well Joni, you’ve lived with total paralysis for decades now, and I’m wondering if you still encounter people who pray for your healing?
JONI: Well, honestly, not too often anymore. But Shauna, not long ago there was this Instagram post of me and my quadriplegic friend, Renée Bondi, and we were sitting in our wheelchairs together singing, “You’re a good, good Father, it’s who you are.” And we were having such fun! And Renée was singing melody and me, harmony. Anyway, I guess it was watched a lot. And in answer to your question about healing, one viewer named Barbara, wrote this she said, “Something became so clear to me [watching you and Renée, singing so happily in your wheelchairs]. I’ve often wondered why the Lord did not heal you because the miracle would’ve brough Him glory to His name. But then it hit me so hard while watching that post of you two quadriplegics singing. If God had healed you both, it would have been a miracle that just came and went. We would always refer to it in the past tense. But instead [and this is what hit me], you and your friend are both present-tense miracles of resurrection power far beyond any physical miracle. You are not a burning bush that the world saw in the past. You are a bush that’s still-a-flame, beautifully burning in the present tense.”
When I read that, I just put my head back and said, “Hallelujah!” Because Barbara just described what a true miracle it is for me and my quadriplegic friend Renée to live with total paralysis and yet—Sing with joy to God, “You’re a good, good Father [oh, and He is].” And Barbara, that Instagram follower nailed it when she said that it takes the miracle of resurrection power far, far beyond any physical miracle. My friend Renée would agree: it takes the power of the resurrection talked about in Ephesians 1, that same power as the mighty strength that raised the Lord Jesus from the dead—it takes that kind of grave-splitting power—to keep us persevering, enduring, trusting, smiling, singing as we sit day after day, year after year in our wheelchairs. And I hope—oh, how I pray—that many others who, like Barbara, watched that little video will experience the same revelation. Because Renée and I support the claim of Christ that His power is best displayed when we are at our weakest.
I want to say a quick word about Barbara’s comment, when she wrote, “You are a bush that is still-a-flame, beautifully burning in the present tense.” That bush she’s referring to is in Exodus, the burning bush that Moses saw. It was the actual presence of God, a flame in the bush. And Moses thought it was curious that this dry, desert bush in flames wasn’t burnt up but just kept glowing and burning in a flame and burning and glowing, and it should’ve burnt up but it didn’t. And Christians who suffer greatly, and yet graciously [like my quadriplegic friend, Renée]; we often make others curious. Because we are like a flaming bush unconsumed, causing people to ask, like Moses, “Why is this bush not burnt up?” John Newton observed that the strength and stability of such believers—these fellow Christians who endure great hardships yet keep their hearts bright and their smiles fresh because of Jesus; it can only be explained by the miracle of God’s sustaining grace.
SHAUNA: That’s right, Joni. And hey listening friend, come see that short video of Joni and Renée singing, because we’ve put it up today for you on joniradio.org. And sing along with us because God is indeed a—
JONI AND SHAUNA: “Good, good Father. It’s who He is!”
© Joni and Friends