A Note From Tom: May 12th, 2011

Hey, Everyone!

Well, I’m still not over Friday night! When you get to see one of your biggest heroes of all time!...

When we were in Florence, Italy last week, we saw some famous folks, I guess. Especially if you count statues as people. We walked past the David of Michelangelo (“Scuse me, but didn’t you forget something?”)…We passed the statue of Dante Aleghieri in the Piazza of Santa Croce (Wow. What a grumpy looking dude!) . One time I saw someone I thought I recognized in Florence, but I couldn’t remember his name. I thought it might have been someone we knew from a Sunday School class at Cedar Springs Presbyterian in K-town. “When he sees me, maybe he’ll remind me what his name is,” I thought. Then I recognized him. It was the dentist from the old Bob Newhart show. And he didn’t recognize me one bit!

Last week on the plane I talked to some folks who had been in Rome to see the Pope and attend the ceremonies for the beatification of Pope John Paul II. A beatification is when someone is officially declared a saint. What a party! St. Peter’s was slammed! Only thing…Paul says…or rather, Saint Paul says… that whenever anyone accepts Jesus as his or her Savior, that person becomes a saint in that very instant and forever! I’ve been a saint since 1974! And I didn’t get a party like that! Maybe ours is comin’…”at the last trump…in the twinkling of an eye…”

Anyway…as I was saying (before I distracted myself)…I did get to be in the same room with one of my heroes the other night at the Knoxville Convention Center! She wasn’t sitting on a throne in the Vatican or standing on a pedestal like those Renaissance statues do.

She was in a wheel chair.

Joni Eareckson Tada has always been a sister in Christ who has helped me so much! She has been a quadriplegic since a diving accident in the Chesapeake Bay when she was seventeen in 1967. Since then, she has written 48 books, is heard by a million a week on the radio, has served in countless ways disabled folks in 45 countries, has been on the National Council on Disability and the Disability Advisory Committee to the U.S. State Department…in short, she’s amazing! She sings beautifully, she’s a theological genius, and oil paints with her mouth! There’s almost nothing she can’t do…except walk and brush her own teeth. I’ve got almost every book she’s written and love them! She has helped me so much!

I guess it’s mostly because the stuff she says is the truth she breathes. She shares insights from the Word that are the things she needs to know and believe to make it!

I heard her lecturing at Dallas Seminary once when she had to stop and ask for the prayers of the class because she couldn’t get enough breath into her lungs. Talk about anxiety! From her chair, her lungs deliver only 40% of normal, and she knows the future promises a diminishing respiratory capacity. Besides all that, she’s spent the last year battling breast cancer (Doing well now!) But when she begins to feel worry creeping, she says she thinks of sparrows. Here’s what Joni wrote about those little birds…

“Jesus said that house sparrows are barely worth a penny.  Yet of all the world’s more than 9,000 species of birds, Jesus singled out the house sparrow to make a point.  In Matthew chapter 10 he said that if one of those sparrows falls to the ground, the Father notices.  God cares.  Our Lord tells us that not one of those sparrows will fall to the ground apart from the will of the Father.  And if God takes time to keep tabs on a house sparrow – who it is, where it’s going, where it lives, whether or not its needs are being met – if God cares about this least-noticed and insignificant of all birds, then surely He keeps tabs on you -- intimately and personally and with every detail in mind…

The Bible may point to eagles to underscore courage or power, and the Bible may talk about doves as symbols of peace and contentment, but the Bible reserves sparrows to teach a lesson about trust.  Just as the Lord tenderly cares for a tiny bird, even making note when it is harmed, or when it falls to the ground, God gently reminds you that He is worthy of your deepest confidence and your trust…”

Reminds me of a poem folks say used to hang on walls of homes “back in the day” It’s kinda corny but I like it! …Ready?

Said the robin to the sparrow,


“I should really like to know,


Why these anxious human beings


Rush about and worry so.”

Said the sparrow to the robin,


“Friend I think that it must be,


That they have no Heavenly Father,


Such as cares for you and me.”

Chirp.