Your suffering is a great and terrible wilderness. Through the most painful and difficult circumstances, Christ teaches you to lean on him, making the memories of even the hardest times great.
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Hi, I’m Joni Eareckson Tada with some hard but good words.
All this week I’ve been sharing what I’ve learned from more than five decades in my wheelchair. But I have to say that often, learning something in suffering is not always the point. Sometimes, just the fact that you survive, that alone is a victory. Because there are terrible times in our lives; deep troubles whose shadow we never ever seem to really escape. You look back, and all you see is a “wilderness,” like the one Moses trudged through in Deuteronomy 1:19, where he said, and we departed from Horeb, and went through all that “great and terrible wilderness.” Yep, as I sit in my wheelchair today and look back over more than half a century of paralysis, I can say it has been a great and terrible wilderness. Great, yes, for sure. But it’s also been a wilderness.
I once read an essay on this, and let me paraphrase the author* here. Pointing to Deuteronomy 1, the author inasmuch said, “We are better for the wildernesses. The rough road, the cavernous uphill, places where the wind roars and the cold assaults; and we are better for passing through it patiently and steadily. Rightly trodden, its barren sand made us men. Taken in the right spirit, we saw in the wilderness the beginnings of the garden of God. When we look back on it all, through all that was great and terrible, how can we not remember the divine help that we received? Who can forget the clump of palm trees where no palm trees were expected? Who can forget God, the tower of strength to us in our time of weakness? The ‘great and terrible wilderness’ was the place where great prayers were prayed. Great faith was exercised, great intimacy with the Lord, experienced. Looking back, you owe your very life to the wilderness which, at the time, made you so afraid… you may have wanted your wilderness journey to be miles shorter, but it was in that last mile that you probably saw the brightest angels.”
Well, that paraphrase describes so perfectly the way I look over my shoulder at the past. I see so much desolation and devastation. I see long, hard nights in which I found no relief. I look back and, yes, all those years of paralysis, most of them have been pretty “terrible.” But like that wilderness in Deuteronomy, I can also look back and say it was “great.” A great God delivered me time and again. Never once was I abandoned; never once did God leave me. I see a great Bible that provided rugged, robust promises on which I leaned. I look back at that great and terrible wilderness and I recall great friends – wonderful, compassionate friends – who stuck with me through the hardest parts of my journey. I look back and I see a great purpose in it all: great achievements for Christ’s kingdom, and great victories that were won over Satan. Best of all, I see great glory to my Savior. All of it, all of it in that “great and terrible wilderness.”
Sometimes learning something in suffering is not the point. Sometimes, just the fact that you came through it, heaving and hurting, is enough. That is the victory. And I think you understand that, given your own wilderness. Just don’t forget. It may have been terrible, but leaning on Jesus Christ, the memory of each darkness and desolation can be great. And why wouldn’t it be? You followed a great God every single step of the way.
*“The People’s Bible” by Joseph Parker, https://biblehub.com/commentaries/parker/deuteronomy/1.htm
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