Appreciating Right Now
I’m Joni Eareckson Tada and welcome to Joni and Friends.
Hi, friends. You know, I know someone named Jennifer I want to tell you about today. She suffers terribly from migraine headaches, cluster headaches; you know, the kind that make you nauseous, they hurt so bad. And what is sad is that Jennifer is so young. She’s got a small apartment, has to work to make ends meet. So she can’t afford to let these headaches dominate her. On some mornings Jennifer wakes up with both hands on her head, thinking, “God, I can’t do this. I don’t have the will to even get out of bed. Oh, Lord, help me just make it to the shower.” On days like this, Jennifer says she’s doing great if she can make it to lunchtime without collapsing back in bed. And, you know, her situation reminds me that when you are hurting, life is lived in steps – very small steps. We know for a fact that God will see us through for a lifetime, but we struggle when life has to be lived one painful day at a time. I mean, I’m the same way in this wheelchair. I simply cannot wrap my mind around “the rest of my life being paralyzed.” I mean, it’s just too overwhelming; it’s too frightening to think of another 20 decades or so in a wheelchair, but I can live with quadriplegia in very small steps – one hour, one day at a time.
You know, I’m sure that’s why, in the book of Galatians, God says that when we live by the Spirit, it means “keeping in step with the Spirit.” I love that phrase! The meaning here is not about keeping pace, as if the Spirit were racing ahead and we’d better hurry up and keep up with him; no, rather, it has to do with measuring one’s moments in a circumspect way. The implication here is lining ourselves up with the Holy Spirit day by day, hour by hour. Keeping life on a short leash, step by step. Lamentations 3 says that God’s strength, his mercy, is available one day at a time. And that’s good, because frankly, when you are hurting, when you’re suffering like with horrible migraines such as Jennifer has, you are only able to take one day at a time – often only one hour at a time.
Friend, contentment comes from many great and small acceptances in your day-by-day life. Not rushing ahead, but appreciating what God is doing now in your life. And that’s exactly what Jennifer is learning to do. For there are some days she is so sick, she just can’t make it to work, and she’s had to leave it in God’s hands, trusting that he’ll provide for her needs. I mean, man, that’s a test of faith! Human beings are not wired to slow down and appreciate what God is doing right now in our lives. No, we’re the type who always want to kind of like rush ahead, peer over the horizon, see what’s up, what’s coming up next, what’s in store for the future. Discontented people like that are always rushing ahead to somehow escape the “now” of their circumstances. But Jennifer has been rescued from that. She’s learning what it means to keep in step with the Spirit.
So, what is there in your life right now that is slowing you down? Maybe old age? Maybe a wheelchair like mine? Or painful bouts with arthritis? Well, these few short minutes we’re spending together talking about this right now may just be God’s way of prodding you to thank him for that problem. After all, it is forcing you to kind of gear down to a slower speed. The environment in which we learn how to be content is a world of minutes and moments and very small steps. As someone has said, “When life is not the way you like it, like it the way it is.” One day, one hour at a time, with Christ. And you will be blessed.
© Joni and Friends
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