A Note From Tom: October 26th, 2012
Hey, everyone!
Hope you’re having a day FULLLL of thanks, praise, and just…you know…a day that’s a happy one! “Cause we have a million reasons to be thankful all the time! If you just count all the stuff God has forgiven us for on a day-to-day basis, it comes out to an average of about a million reasons to be thankful per month! Plus, all day today, no matter where you go, in ways that go beyond our mind, according to the letter Paul wrote to the brothers and sisters who lived in Ephesus, you’re “seated already in heaven with Jesus”! I don’t fully understand what that means because it’s too awesome to comprehend! But I AM thankful to be sitting there!
Everything looks better from up here!
For all the reasons Jesus gives us to be thankful, we oughta be dancing down the hall at school, cart-wheelin’ out the door to work, and jumping on the desk, doing the tarantella when we get there! It oughta keep us up at night like Christmas eve used to do!
And yet, it takes amazingly little to put a gimp in that dance step. The other day I had this jagged-y toenail that somehow was digging into his neighbor. I could feel it when I was walking down the street. Like every step. You know how it is…
…Step…”mmm”…step….”hmmm”…step…”yikes!”…step…”uuhhhh, I need to fix that”…step…”owww! That kinda hurts!”…step…”wonder if it’s bleeding”…step…”That’s gonna drive me NUTS!!”...step…”DON’T THINK ABOUT IT!!”...step…”HOWAMISUPPOSEDTONOT THINKABOUTIT!??”...step…
Just takes a toenail to dominate your thankfulness.
Last week, I was thinking about how little it takes to deflate my praise because I was reading some stuff by Joni Eareckson Tada., whose heart knows how to praise no matter what! Maybe you know who she is. You should. She is amazing! At seventeen, she broke her neck, diving into a too shallow Chesapeake Bay. She’s been a quadriplegic in a wheelchair since ’67. At the beginning, she didn’t know how…or, if…she could make it through each day. Her desperation prayer…”Lord, if I can’t die, help me to live!!”
Wow! Has she ever!! She learned to paint with a brush between her teeth… she’s written 35 books (which rock!)…“Joni and Friends”, her international ministry to the disabled, has served thousands in hundreds of countries…and her radio program is heard on 1000 stations! She’s been on Presidential advisory boards and U. S. State Department commissions.
If a raggedy toenail messes with my thanks, what if you couldn’t use your whole body below your head? Joni decided to praise Jesus!...No matter what!
The other day, I was reading something that she wrote about the first moments she’ll spend in Heaven, suddenly enjoying a new, WORKING, glorious body. She was reflecting on the first things she’ll do… things she hasn’t been able to do from her wheelchair all these years. “Will I dance like I haven’t in forever? Will I jump up and down and then leap into my Savior’s arms? ”, she wondered. And then she mentioned a conference she attended. The speaker asked everyone at the end of his talk, to slip out of their chairs and quietly kneel on the floor in a few moments of worship. She said that as she looked over the room, the only one sitting upright in her chair she couldn’t abandon, she wept. Not for loneliness of being the only one excluded from adoration’s posture, but for the beauty of a room full of kneeling.
“The first thing I’ll do when I have a body that is made new won’t be running, or jumping, or dancing. The first thing I’ll do when I see Him is…kneel.”
Me. too.