I’ve come to the point in my life where medical issues become more commonplace.  In retirement now, my social life revolves around which doctors I will visit every week. I feel like I’m suffering while sitting on my pity pot.

This week I remembered a person who had every reason to complain. Joni Eareckson Tada grew up very active in her youth, playing every sport imaginable.  On July 30, 1967, at age 17, Joni dove into Chesapeake Bay after misjudging the shallowness of the water. She fractured her fourth and fifth cervical vertebrae leaving her a quadriplegic, paralyzed from the shoulders down. During her two years of rehabilitation, she experienced anger, depression, suicidal thoughts, and religious doubts. Then, during occupational therapy, she learned to paint with a brush between her teeth and began selling her artwork. She is now a world-renowned author and speaker.

Joni experienced a weariness that comes from suffering in a body that never seems to give you a break. She didn’t stay that way, though. But for some believers, sickness is not a season. It is waking up in pain again. It is exhaustion that sleep does not fix. It is disease, limitations, medications, appointments, and learning to live with a body that simply does not work the way it should. And for many (and me), sometimes you are just tired of enduring it.

The Bible says we should not pretend otherwise. Paul said, “Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day” (2 Corinthians 4:16).  Scripture is brutally honest about what the fall has done to this world and to those who live here. Romans 8 says that even believers “groan inwardly” as we wait for “the redemption of our bodies.”

One of the hardest parts of chronic illness is wondering what happens if it gets worse. What happens if I am still here, how will I bear this five years from now?  Sometimes we try to carry tomorrow with strength God has only given us for today.  Jesus said, “Sufficient for the day is its own trouble” (Matthew 6:34).

There will be grace for tomorrow when tomorrow comes. And if God does not remove the suffering, His answer is not that the suffering is bearable. Christ told Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9).

His grace is sufficient precisely because His strength provides us the power to overcome. You can weep and groan and ask God how much longer. But you can also say with the psalmist, “My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever” (Psalm 73:26).

Our hope is in Christ – today, tomorrow and forever.  And for everyone who belongs to Him, there is coming a morning when you will wake up and nothing will hurt. Until then, He does not promise that you will never be brought to the end of your strength here. 

He promises something better — when you reach the end of your strength, you will never reach the end of His!

Tagged: perseverance, scripture