Hi, I’m Joni Eareckson Tada and welcome to Joni and Friends. Our ministry has been housed in the new International Disability Center for almost 2 years now and you know, I don't think I've ever "missed" being in our old building where I used to work. We leased that old office space for so many years. The hallways were narrow and so were the doorways. I remember when I would leave my office and I would want to turn left toward the restroom, I'd have to make a pretty sharp turn with my power wheelchair. Well, over the years – I crunched that corner wall more than many times... I even took a small chunk out of the wall... right at the level of my foot pedal... Yep, in our old building you could always tell when “Joni’s been here,” -- if there was a tire track on a door or scrapes on the corners of the drywall.
I hated that! I remember one time when they replastered and repainted our old office I was so excited when I came in one Monday morning and saw that they had fixed the missing chunk on the wall next to my office door. I even proudly announced to everyone in the office, “See this? Well, I promise you won’t find me banging into that wall anymore with my wheelchair!”
I tell you... not two weeks later, I was slowly turning left coming out of my door when – ha, oh my goodness, I saw there on the floor it was a chunk of plaster, it was missing from the wall... it was a scuff mark... and right where my old marks used to be it was damaged. The wall was damaged! I was shocked. I knew it wasn’t me who had done it. I had no idea who ran into that wall, but I wanted to make certain that everybody knew it wasn’t me, and so I put a little note – a little yellow post-it – right above the marks on the wall. (It was getting kind of funny at this point)... anyway, the yellow post-it read, “I did not do this, signed Joni” and then a little arrow pointing to the mark on the wall and the missing chunk of plaster. I almost felt proud of myself, I did... the old, “I didn’t do it...not me, don’t look at me!”
Then, later on, I discovered who did the damage. It was one of our faithful volunteers – Hilary Marides in her wheelchair. Well, I tell you what. I felt so awful. I felt so humbled. Hilary has cerebral palsy... she doesn’t get to drive as fast as I do in my wheelchair... and in my puffed-up efforts to clear my name of wrongdoing, inadvertently, I had focused all the attention on poor Hilary. I was so ashamed of myself, and I tell you, I immediately took down that yellow stick-em.
Let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall. Let she who thinks ‘she didn’t do it’ take heed lest she shame another. And you know what? I have a much softer attitude about things now that we are in our new International Disability Center. Oh, of course I want our new office to stay looking great and, yes, I'm careful not to leave my tire tracks on a wall if I back up. But people are more important than plaster and me "wanting others not to think ill of me" is still pride, right? By the way, if you're interested I'd like to give you a tour of our International Disability Center from which so many of our fine programs like Wheels for the World and Family Retreats go forth. Believe me, I'm not proud of this new building so much as I enjoy "boasting in the Lord" over all that we are able to do in sharing the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ from this building. I'd like to show you where I work and, hey, you might even catch Hillary Marides at our Center volunteering with us as she always does. So visit me today at JoniandFriendsradio.org would you and I'll give you a personal tour -- and I promise, if you see a chunk of plaster out of a wall, I'll be quick to confess -- it probably was me who did it anyway.
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