As You Go Forward
Hi, I’m Joni Eareckson Tada and I love saying ‘onward and upward.’
There was a time, however, when you would’ve never caught me saying onward and upward! Like when I was first paralyzed. All I could think about was the past. What it was like to walk and run. What it felt like to swim and climb and bend and stretch and sit and rise and skip and jump, and so much more. I kept thinking about the good old days when I drove my car, hugged my boyfriend, rode my horse.
In fact, back in the late 60s and early 70s, when I had not yet quite adjusted to my wheelchair, there was a Beatles song that I listened to over and over and over again. It went, “Yesterday, love was such an easy game to play, now I need a place to hide away, oh, I believe in yesterday.” Remember that? Well then you know why I liked that song so much because I could not face tomorrow. It was impossible to think that tomorrow held anything better than yesterday. However, once I seriously took the Lordship of Christ, I put away yesterday. The future still looked impossible, but somehow, some way, God would give me something better than walking. Oh my goodness, what plan of God could possibly be better than walking? Back then, I didn’t have a clue. I was so tired of depression and self-pity and singing that stupid Beatle’s song. And I was ready to trust God for the future. From then on, it was forward; it was onward; it was upward!
A little like Exodus Chapter 14, where God led Moses right to the edge of the Red Sea, with nowhere else to turn. They couldn’t turn left, right, center because Pharaoh was quickly closing in. And Moses certainly could not lead a million people out into the ocean. So what was he going to do? Ask people to march right up to the waves and step in? That seemed impossible. Little wonder that God’s people started longing for yesterday! ‘Let’s go back to Egypt’. So this is what happened in Exodus 14 starting with verse 13. It says, “And Moses said unto the people, ‘Fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the LORD, which He will show to you today: for the Egyptians whom ye have seen today, ye shall see them again no more forever. The LORD shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace.’ But the LORD said unto Moses, ‘Wherefore criest thou unto Me? Speak unto the children of Israel, that they go forward.’”
Oh my goodness, in other words, God was telling Moses and his people to face the impossible and move forward. And so you know what happened when Moses took a step of faith and raised his staff and everyone moved forward? When they did, when they stepped into the waves, the Red Sea miraculously parted. And right there explains my whole thing with “onward and upward.” Because there was a time when looking at a future of quadriplegia was as impossible as stepping into the ocean and hoping the waves would part. I had nowhere else to turn; I had to look back at yesterday. But once I began to trust God, once I began to move forward into this new, strange life of total paralysis, the waves parted and the impossible became filled with possibilities.
So now, when I head out the front door, knowing that I am facing a day of pain, I take a deep breath. I wheel forward into the day and say “onward and upward.” It’s the same onward and upward the apostle Paul talks about in Philippians Chapter 3, verse 14. He says, “I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling me.” So friend, get moving into your life. Be grateful for whatever good God gave you in the past, and then wake up. Wake up tomorrow facing the impossible and say, “Lord Jesus, in You, it’s onward and upward.”
© Joni and Friends upward—like
