Every Life Is Worth Living
Hi, I’m Joni Eareckson Tada and I am constantly saying this …
What am I saying? Well, when it comes to those who are on the lowest rung of the social ladder –
those who are often most neglected, forgotten and overlooked, especially world-wide – it is people with disabilities. Especially women, and most especially, children. I’ll never forget talking with a pastor when I was in Africa. He had attended one of my workshops and he asked if he could speak with me after the session. Glancing at him, standing in line, I could tell he was a humble man. Although wearing a tie, his white shirt was threadbare, and his shoes had holes. When it came time for us to speak, he explained how grateful, how glad he was for the teaching that our team had given that day. Basically, I had been sharing with the group how we are all created in the image of God. Each person, each child, is a God-reflector, mirroring our Creator. Each person, as an image-bearer of God has the capacity to love and to give, to connect, communicate, just to name a few things. Children and adults with disabilities, I told them, are not cursed. Their paralysis or their brain injury or developmental delay – these things are not the result of a curse from a local witch doctor; God is the One; He allows these things for good reasons. But it takes faith and love and time to understand those reasons.
And that is when this pastor began to wipe his eyes. As tears filled his eyes, he told a story about when he was a little boy. He remembers his sister, a little sister, a baby, who was born into his family, but his mother and father were dismayed that this child was deformed. From how he described it, the little girl must have had Down syndrome. The parents decided that they could not and would not keep, as they put it, a damaged child. And so, this pastor told me how his father had taken that tiny infant and had trekked back into the bush to just leave her by a river. He simply left her lying there and he walked away. By this time, the eyes of this dear pastor were filled with tears. He said, “I did nothing to stop him,” he confessed. “I was only a boy. What did I know? But still, I did nothing.” The truth from God’s Word that day in that workshop had touched him deeply, and he simply had to relay the story to me as a confession. But he also added, “Yet I now know that God forgives. And today has shown me I must never again think that disabled people are cursed.”
His story left me breathless. But it is not a unique story. In many parts of the world; perhaps most parts, children born with a disability are left to die, or they are buried alive, or they are thrown into a dumpster or trash heap. And it is why I am so passionate about not just giving wheelchairs overseas; I’m passionate about giving the Gospel. The Good News of Jesus that assures us that every life is worth living. Every life is precious and has value. Every life should be embraced and welcomed.
Friend, we live in a world that’s constantly calculating the value of people with disabilities, even though we know they’re priceless. And I hope you will help me keep giving the Gospel of Jesus to those people with disabilities all around the world, along with Bibles and wheelchairs, because it is only the Word of God which will change people’s hearts. Next week is Giving Tuesday and I hope that you will remember Joni and Friends on that day – visit joniradio.org for all the details. Give the perfect gift: the gift that tells people that every life is precious, especially the lives of those with disabilities.
© Joni and Friends
Give The Perfect Gift
Thousands of children and adults are living without the independence and mobility of a wheelchair because throughout the developing world, wheelchairs are either very expensive or extremely scarce.
This Giving Tuesday, your gift – in any amount – will make a difference!
