Unwelcome intrusions and disruptions in your routine can leave you feeling insecure. But the everlasting arms of your sovereign God will never let you go. So choose to face unexpected interruptions with a cheerful disposition, knowing your life is securely in God’s hands!
As a Christian, every day is lived with cheerful insecurity!
Hi, I’m Joni Eareckson Tada, and it’s the way I look at my quadriplegia and the people who help me. As you’d guess, I need help in the morning when I get up: someone to bathe me, do my toileting routines, get me dressed, do my face, and all the rest. I also need help in the evenings being lifted into bed. Now I rely on these people to show up in the morning or in the evening. But sometimes, at the last minute, a helper may call and say they can’t come. Or another might suddenly get sick. And I am stuck. When that happens, a little bit of panic always rises in my throat, and I think, “Oh no, does this mean I’m going to have to stay in bed today?” Or if my helper unexpectedly cancels in the evening, I wonder how late I’ll have to keep sitting in my wheelchair until I find someone to put me in bed
It doesn’t happen often, but it happens often enough that I constantly live with a “cheerful insecurity.” That’s a phrase coined by C. S. Lewis near the end of his life. When he would correspond with people who were suffering, he would say that we all need to learn to live with “cheerful insecurity.”
In other words, you never know what God has ordained in his sovereign plan. There you are, relying on some comfortable routine when, suddenly, God changes things up. Yet, whatever it is, even if it’s a difficult interruption, as Christians we can be cheerful. Why? Because God ordained it. He’s allowing us to go through this, you know, upheaval in the routine for good reasons, and so he can be trusted. So when a helper does not show up, I make sure I trust God with a cheerful disposition. The way I look at it, if there is a no-show from a helper, it’s a chance to build my faith. I often say that my most tenuous, yet faith-building moments are when I must humble myself and ask somebody to help me at the last minute. I’m tempted to feel like a burden, but when I am passed from one helper to the next like a “football” – you know, a person that unexpectedly cancels, but another steps in – it’s, you know, kind of like a lateral pass in football. I realize it is all in God's hands. It is not only building faith in my life, it is perhaps building compassion and flexibility in whoever picks up the slack. When it comes to God, he never drops the rope; he never lets go of the football. Deuteronomy 33 assures me – and you, too – that underneath us are God's everlasting arms. And never, ever does he drop a thing. And then God assures you in Isaiah 46:4, he says, “Even to your old age I will be the same, and even to your graying years I will bear you! I have done it, and I will carry you; and I will bear you and I will deliver you.”
Man with those assurances, you can be cheerful in those times that feel a little insecure. G.D. Watson called it a “calm sweet carelessness.” It’s when you can inwardly smile at your own disappointments and interruptions and not even ask to be delivered from the inconvenience. What will be, will be because you know that God will bear you, and carry you, and according to Isaiah 46, he’ll even deliver you. Oh, friend, I do hope that these precious insights give you hope in your hardship today because you can be cheerful whenever interruptions make you feel insecure. There’s no need to worry or to wonder. The everlasting arms of your sovereign God will never, ever let you go. And that’s your good word today, that’s your hope, in whatever hardship you are facing. Visit us at joniradio.org.
© Joni and Friends