Trusting Jesus Through Covid

Hi, I’m Joni Eareckson Tada and thank you for praying! 

Oh, my goodness; thank you, thank you, thank you! When you learned that I contracted COVID a while back – and you can probably still hear it in my voice – man, you lifted me up on a pallet of prayer before the Lord, and I’m so grateful. And so is Ken Tada. He contracted the virus, also. Here we had tried so hard, sequestering and staying isolated, but somehow COVID snuck through the front door. And it was hard.  

To be honest, my lungs are telling me that I’m not quite in the clear. Being a quadriplegic, it’s still a little hard to breathe, but, hey, I’m supposed to work my lungs, so I don’t mind talking to you today. Breathing is especially difficult at night in bed. You know, at first, when I was told I had COVID, I thought “this is a death sentence.” But you know what? My many years of dealing with quadriplegia already taught me how to carry even this cross. For when I trusted Jesus to see me through – yeah, even if it meant death – when I gave it all up to him, honestly I could feel God take this gentle, firm possession of this affliction and do a work in my heart. Lying in bed at night with this virus and struggling to breathe, it was as though the Lord was pressing me and saying, “Joni, do you believe me, that I’ll never leave you? That I’m your ever-present help even in this trouble? That doubting only makes things worse. Do you, will you, believe my grace is sufficient, whether I take you home now or assign you to remain? Do you trust me?!”  

And in the dark, I cried out, “Yes, Lord. I believe.” And then, honestly, in the ensuing hours, I felt this wonderfully odd calmness; this indifference to how much it might hurt or how it would end. And I felt perfectly still under the hand of God. I mean, he pulled me into his shelter, and I was there resting in the shadow of the Almighty, and it felt blessed. You know, I’ve always said that my most heavenly moments are when Jesus shows up in hellish moments. And I think I experienced what G.D. Watson once described. He said, “When the suffering soul reaches a calm, sweet carelessness, when it can inwardly smile at its own suffering, and does not even ask God to deliver it from the suffering, then it [works] its blessed ministry…then the [cross you carry] begins to weave itself into a crown.” When we give our suffering over to God, and we sink ourselves into his will, he’ll make every pain work its perfect purpose in our lives. 

And man, I trust these are helpful words for you today if your suffering seems to you right now a complete mystery. I pray you’ll embrace God with willful thanks, finding hope in your hardships. Oh, and one more thing. While in the ER receiving first-class care from a hospital that doesn’t know Joni, I kept looking around shaking my head and thinking of the millions of people with disabilities even here in the States, but mostly around the world, who lack access to that kind of medical care and even worse who don’t know Jesus. And so I cannot keep the kind of message I’m sharing today to myself. So, thank you for sharing these words with your friends. And please help me share it with others. Join me and the Joni and Friends team in helping other people with disabilities find the kind of hope in Jesus that I’ve just described. And today, may these words help you weave your cross into a crown. Thank you for praying, and I’m looking forward to serving Jesus with joy and energy with you throughout the year. God bless you today and thanks for listening!

© Joni and Friends