Hi, I’m Joni Eareckson Tada with a little lesson about memories.
Welcome to "Joni and Friends" where you’ve heard me share many times how God used my diving accident. How He used my quadriplegia to change me; to get my priorities straight; He used it to show me how sustaining His grace really is; He used my accident to make me more like Jesus and eventually, He even used my broken neck to start a ministry that would reach people with disabilities around the world with the love of Christ. There are so many wonderful things God did through my accident, and so, the memory of that tragic day is no longer tragic.
But it wasn’t always that way. There was a time when memories of that fateful day I dove into the water, there was a time that whenever I thought about breaking my neck, it brought only sorrow, regret, and terrible anguish and grief. I would hate talking to people about those early days when I was in the hospital. Those memories only made me more depressed, even memories of early hospital visits from Christian friends. Even those memories made me sad. That’s the way it used to be. It was because — and here’s the important part; listen up here — it was because I looked at every memory through the lens of my despondency. I refused to view my memories through the lens of God's Word.
Face it, memories of painful times in the past will always be gloomy, if we remain pessimistic about those sad times. But when we remember difficult times through the optimism of God's Word, then we are assured that God works even that awful thing out for the good, even those sad times in the past. We are assured that nothing touched us that was not first filtered through God's wise fingers. We are assured that even the worst of times in the past, somehow, some way fit into God's greater plan for our life. This is the sort of biblical optimism which turns every gloomy memory into a bright awareness of the awesome and mysterious ways of God; God who turns our suffering into victory if we would but let Him.
That’s exactly what happened to Jeremiah. In Lamentations chapter 3, verse 19, he says, “I remember my affliction and my soul is downcast.” Okay, there Jeremiah is allowing his emotions to take over. But then just a couple of verses later, that same memory of all his afflictions gave Jeremiah life and comfort, for he says, "This I recall to mind, and therefore have I hope." Like a two-edged sword, the same memory first humbles him with one edge, and then lifts him out of despair with the other.
Charles Spurgeon once wrote that “A person who tends toward despairing thoughts will remember every dark foreboding in the past, and focus on every gloomy feature in the present. Thus memory, clothed in sackcloth, becomes a cup of gall and wormwood. But this need not be. Wisdom can transform memory into an angel of comfort. Because the same memory which, in its left hand brings gloomy omens, can be trained to bear in its right hand, a wealth of hopeful signs. There is no need for God to create a new thing in order to restore our joy; if we would but rake the ashes of the past, we would find light in our present darkness.” Wow!
Oh, friend listening, don’t let your memories breed despondency. No, please let each of your memories be a reason for joyful hope. And to help you cultivate a little of that biblical optimism, visit my radio page today at joniandfriends.org and ask for your booklet “Forgiving Others.”
© Joni and Friends
Compliments of Joni and Friends
PO Box 3333 Agoura Hills, CA 91376