There is no better way to identify with Jesus than to join the fellowship of his sufferings. Only in doing so will you truly come to know him deeply – so choose God’s will, as Jesus did on the cross.
I’m Joni Eareckson Tada with a story that I know will touch your heart.
It starts with a wrinkled sheet of tablet paper laying in the center of my empty desk. I looked at it closely and there was a crayoned sun in the upper-right corner that beamed five thick yellow rays into the happy faces of dancing flowers and there was a white house with large windows and red shutters. On the green lawn, sitting in a chair with large, spoked wheels, was a girl with blond hair, two pink circles on her cheeks, and a big smile. On the left side of the drawing, someone had crayoned these words: “Dear Joni, I like my cat and I like school. When I grow up, I want to have a wheelchair just like yours. Love, Shannon.” Oh, my goodness, my smile broke into laughter because I know who Shannon is. Come on! She’s a healthy, active little girl. She plays hopscotch and “Mother, May I.” She has absolutely no use for a wheelchair. But you try telling that to Shannon! For her, a wheelchair would top her birthday list; more desired than a purple bicycle with pink streamers on the handles. As far as she’s concerned, a wheelchair means adventure. A joyride. An initiation into a very special club.
Now, Shannon doesn’t have a clue about the price one actually pays to join that club: the pain, the paralysis, the disappointment, heartache, hurdles. To her, those things don’t even matter. She disregards the dark side, considering it not worth even knowing. All she desires is the chance to identify with me, to be like me, to know me. And if that means having a wheelchair like me, then great – she’ll take it! You know, oh, it takes a child like Shannon to help us really understand the meaning behind Paul’s words to the Philippians where he says, “I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing… Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I [might] gain Christ… I want to know Christ – yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participate in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death.”
Man, I love those words, but, oh, are they hard words. For there’s no better way to identify with Jesus – to be like him and to know him – than to join the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings. Or as Shannon might put it, “the club.” Suffering has a way of taking life out of the abstract, out of the theoretical, and making it painfully concrete. Lofty sermons and books and conferences and group Bible studies will tell us about Jesus, but when we suffer, suddenly we realize that we are not handling theological ideas. Rather, we are being handled by a Person – the warm and intimate Person of the Lord Jesus. At other times, when life is rosier, we may slide by with knowing about him. With imitating him and quoting him and speaking of him. But only in the fellowship of sharing in his suffering will we know – I mean really know – Jesus. We identify with him at the point of his deepest humiliation. The cross, the symbol of his greatest suffering, becomes our personal touchpoint with the Lord of the universe.
Now, no one’s asking you to beg membership in the club like my little friend Shannon. But there is something wonderful about her childlike trust that must endear her to the Lord. Friend, you don’t have to choose suffering. You don’t have to choose pain and humiliation. All you need to do is choose God’s will, as Jesus did on his cross. True, suffering will come – it is written into the script of our lives – but, oh, how it bonds us to our Savior. Remember this the next time you are faced with suffering.
© Joni and Friends