Abide with Me
Hi, I’m Joni Eareckson Tada with a beautiful old hymn I think you will remember and if you do, sing along.
Abide with me, fast flows the evening tide
When darkness deepens, Lord with me abide.
When other helpers fail and comforts flee
Help for the helpless, O abide with me
Maybe you heard a little cracking in my voice, maybe some effort and maybe I wasn’t perfect pitched, but you know what? I’m singing from a wheelchair and I’m singing the best I can. Because I have learned to sing my way through suffering knowing that regardless the trial God is always abiding with me. I love that. Shall I take from God’s hand his blessing, yet not welcome any pain? Shall I thank him for days of sunshine yet grumble in days of rain? Shall I love him in times of plenty but then leave him in days of drought? Shall I trust when I reap a harvest, but when winter winds blow then doubt? Oh, let our will be done in me Jesus. In your love I will abide. Oh, I long for nothing else as long as you are glorified. It is the anthem of my life; a subject I talk about often in our times together on this radio program. Yes, when following Christ it means a hard and difficult road. True, it has its disappointments and pain, but it is a journey that has so much pleasure and so much joy in the Lord.
Finding the joy of the Lord is in suffering. Wow! That’s a big theme for me. Like Psalm 119, verse 67 where it says, “Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep your word.” And then just a few verses later the psalmist says again, “It was for my good that I was afflicted so that I could learn your statutes.” Oh, my goodness. You know if there is one thing you and I could learn from those two short Bible verses it is this: God sends affliction to help us glorify His name. How so? Well, I can say it from a wheelchair that affliction takes away the shallowness of life and it makes us more serious about life. We learn to abide in Him; we can more easily resonate and better understand why God’s word is so serious.
Just like John Piper says, “There is not a single glib page in the book of God” (don’t you love that)? There is nothing shallow, nothing superficial about the Bible and affliction teaches us that. It knocks the worldly props out from under us and forces us to rely on God; abiding in Him. You see, the Bible spends an extraordinary about of time driving home the point that we are to put our hope in God and we are to trust in him, but if we never suffered we would have no reason to put our hope, or our trust, in God. Hope and trust presume that you have something forcing you; you have something causing you to place your hope and trust in someone who can save you and that something is suffering.
When I broke my neck, my affliction made me search the scriptures and once I realized my quadriplegia was permanent, the Bible became my meat and drink. I learned to abide in Him. Oh, friend, I pray you will do the same today and may that be your song.
“Abide with Me” by Mary E. Byrne, Eleanor H. Hull, David Evans; Copyright public domain
© Joni and Friends
