AL: Joni, I’m sure our listeners would be interested in knowing how you spend the day when you’re at the office of Joni and Friends…
JONI: Oh, well, I’ll do writing and researching… interviews…
AL: … And when you’re not doing those things?
JONI: Well, when I want to take a break, I usually don’t head for the water cooler; I head for the phone. I keep several numbers handy… telephone numbers of people who have become recently ill or injured. And, boy, do some of these folks have questions!
AL: … and I imagine some pretty tough questions…
JONI: The other day I returned a call from a guy named Bill who had telephoned our office – he’s a quadriplegic who’s been in his wheelchair for over 40 years – I thought I had lived in a chair a long time, this guy had me beat. But even after 40 years, he was struggling with this whole thing about God being good. He asked, “Joni, you’re a quadriplegic; you know how hard it is. What do you think about God allowing all this?!”
AL: … and you said? …
JONI: Well, I told Bill that if I trusted in “what I think,” I’d have checked out a long time ago. I told him that I had to hold onto the Word of God like an anchor. And God's Word tells me that the Lord took no pleasure in my broken neck; and in Bill’s, neither. Like any father who has compassion on his children, it pained God’s heart to see me hurt. Lamentations 3:32 says, “Though he brings grief, he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love. For he does not willingly bring affliction or grief to the children of men.” Bill thought that was an interesting verse… because it says God “brings grief,” but then in the next line, “He does not willingly bring grief.” Which is it?
I told him God did not get a kick out of us breaking our necks. Yet at the same time, it was God's good pleasure to permit my accident. And Bill’s accident, too. Bill didn’t quite understand that, so at that point, I asked him if he knew anything about cameras and lenses. He said, “Say what?” I said God has the capacity to look at the world through two lenses – through a narrow lens and a wide-angle one. When God looks at a painful event through a narrow lens, he sees the tragedy for what it is and he is deeply grieved. In Ezekiel 18:32 he says, "I take no pleasure in the death of anyone." God feels the sting in his chest when a child dies of cancer or a husband is killed in an accident.
But, when God looks at that same event through his wide-angle lens, he sees the tragedy in relation to everything leading up to it, as well as everything flowing out from it. He sees a mosaic stretching into eternity and it is this mosaic with all its parts, both good and evil, which brings him delight. And Bill and I are just part of that wonderfully mysterious mosaic…
AL: And the rest of us too, Joni, with our “handicaps.” That true with us. That’s a powerful verse from Lamentations, and I think I’d like to repeat it… In the span of a single verse, the Bible asserts "the Lord brings grief," yet "he does not willingly bring grief." God tried this out on himself. He willed the death of his own Son, but he took no delight in it. God saw how Jesus’ death would demonstrate his incomprehensible mercy, as well as bring his people to glory. God often wills what he despises because – and only because – he has a wide-angle view on the world.
JONI: And a wide-angle view on Bill’s accident, and mine too!
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JONI AND FRIENDS
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