Make it a practice to hold your blessings lightly. The Lord graciously gives many gifts and joys in this life, but if he removes them, you want to join Job in saying, “Blessed be the name of the Lord.”
Hi, I’m Joni Eareckson Tada, and I’ve learned to hold things lightly.
It’s a way of life for me, and I’m not the only one. My friend, Peter Sumner, directs the Christian Blind Mission in New Zealand. Peter was visually impaired at an early age and has spent decades in darkness. All that time, he was totally blind. But a miracle happened in Peter’s life some years ago when an eye specialist performed a corneal graft on Peter’s eyes. And suddenly, after years without sight, Peter was able to see. I mean, this was a miracle! He delighted in this new and exciting ability just to see everything. He stood amazed watching brilliant sunsets, and he marveled at the smiles on the faces of friends. He told me that he never imagined yellow could be – well, so yellow! And for green to be so stunningly green!
Peter told me in a recent letter, however, that he has suffered a setback. The corneal graft has developed an ulceration. And he wrote, “Joni, this has reduced my vision significantly, and it was all rather worrying. Because sight, I have found, is quite addictive and the thought of losing it all, once again, was very difficult to bear. I’m pleased to say that my condition has stabilized, and, at the present, I can read letters with the help of a strong light and a magnifying glass.” But then he added something in his letter which struck a chord in my heart. Before he closed, Peter inserted a line from a poem by William Blake. He said, “He who binds himself to a joy, does the winged life destroy; but he who kisses the joy as it flies, lives in eternity’s sunrise.”
And then added, “Joni, I’ve had to learn not to bind to myself the joy of sight but to kiss this winged blessing as it flies through my life. At times, the urge to grab and hold onto it is overwhelming, but in my heart of hearts, I realize that one has to develop a certain detachment to joys of all kinds in order to escape the insidious poison of bitterness or despair.” Man, I love that; I mean, his attitude, his perseverance – all of it on the gift of his sight, as well as all kinds of blessings in life. I know it’s the way I feel about my health. I mean, I have lived in this wheelchair over five decades, and despite pain and cancer, man, I feel so blessed. But if tomorrow my cancer came back; or, if tomorrow my pain worsened, or there was some new ailment I had to deal with – can’t complain; And I would not complain. Because I’ve made the practice of not binding myself to my blessings; they’re not entitlements; blessings and gifts, they all fly through my life. Like Peter – and I hope you do the same – I have developed a healthy detachment to joys of all kinds; that way, if God removes them, there will be no room for bitterness. Job was right when he said, “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”
It’s like the words of that old song that we all love, “Blessed be your name when the sun is shining down on me; when the world is all as it should be, blessed be your name. Blessed be your name on the road marked with suffering; though there's pain in the offering, blessed be your name. Every blessing you pour out, I'll turn back to praise; when the darkness closes in, Lord, still I will say, blessed be the name of the Lord.” As the darkness closes in on Peter Sumner, I got a feeling this is what he’s gonna be singing. The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of our Lord Jesus.
© Joni and Friends