Few people radiate such joy in the present moment or hope in the promise of heaven the way Joni Eareckson Tada does. I trust Joni when she speaks of God’s comfort and peace because she is so strikingly honest about the suffering that brought her to that place of contentment. She draws me closer to the One who was also acquainted with grief. It is an honor to welcome Joni to the front porch today….

Guest Post by Joni Eareckson Tada

Suffering has a way of heaving you beyond the shallows of life where your faith feels ankle-deep. It casts you out into the fathomless depths of God, a place where Jesus is the only One who can touch bottom.

For more than half a century, my quadriplegia has taught me how to swim in the depths of God. I am not saying that I swim well. Sometimes I feel like I’m only dog-paddling. Other times I think I’ll drown in the waves of pain that crash over me. But Jesus is always my rescuer. He is my anchor, and I cling tighter to him now than ever before. It’s because I need him more. 

But pain has also melded my heart with my Savior’s. I find comfort in the Man of Sorrows who is acquainted with grief (see Isaiah 53:3). He is a better relief and rest than any pain medication. 

And it is my pain that has forced a slower pace. I now see more in God’s Word. I see him in small and great pleasures. I feel his delight in everything from sun-dappled shadows on a lawn to those breathtaking moments when a wayward soul awakens to gospel truth. Somehow, pain—and perhaps aging—has helped me appreciate life more. 

It’s why over the last year or so, I’ve gone back to my tattered copy of The Practice of the Presence of God, a little book of teachings and conversations from the seventeenth-century Carmelite monk known as Brother Lawrence.

“The worst that could happen to me was, to lose that sense of God which I had enjoyed so long.”

Lawrence’s primary job for many years was working in the kitchen of his monastic community. He faced physical pain from war wounds and described himself as so clumsy that he broke everything he touched. Yet he had a quiet faith and an unassuming approach to life that I—and millions of other readers—find profoundly meaningful.

Back in the 1960s, I read The Practice of the Presence of God because everyone was reading it. But now, in a tense post-Covid world, I started reading it again because I am drawn to Lawrence’s faith in the midst of suffering and his constant awareness of God’s presence throughout the day.

Our culture screams at us in a thousand different voices, and at times I can hardly hear my soul breathe. Lawrence speaks a quiet hope and love that lowers the volume of the world’s noise.

Lawrence exercised his faith among pots and pans, scrub buckets, toilets, and dirty floors. I exercise my faith among urine bags, bedpans, wheelchair batteries, support stockings, and an external ventilator. 

Life for both the monk and me seems filled with the mundane. But it is also filled with the splendorous majesty of our great triune God.

“… if you want to know Christ intimately, it will mean journeying through deep suffering.“

In the ordinary rhythms of life with a disability and its paraphernalia, I practice the moment-by-moment presence of Jesus Christ. I hardly have a choice in the matter; pain and disability require daily closeness to Christ.

Yet I learn from my Carmelite friend. He models a life of never rushing.  Waiting always. Enduring long. Not scorning the simple tasks of our days. Seeing God in all things.

As Lawrence wrote, it wasn’t pain of body or mind he feared: “The worst that could happen to me was, to lose that sense of God which I had enjoyed so long.”

I can’t say that I have not feared pain of body or mind. Like Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, I have asked the Father to remove my cup of suffering. Unlike Jesus, who asked only three times, I have pleaded countless times.

Yet years of pain have taught me that if you want to know Christ intimately, it will mean journeying through deep suffering.

Pain might push you to the limits, where you nearly collapse. And sometimes you do.

“Suffering brings my own emptiness and God’s fullness together.“

But remember this: Your call to suffer comes from a God tender beyond description. Do not misinterpret the ways of your loving Lord. Your pain is a private meeting place with God—a hard but personal space where you will know Christ’s most amazing love for you beyond a doubt.

My own suffering has sent me into the inner recesses of God’s heart and shut the door on the world. In that solitary get-alone-with-God place, fresh desires for Jesus start springing up in my soul. My love, my devotion, and a sober respect for my majestic Savior begin to stretch my capacity for him. I find a lively hope of heaven and a desire to live a holy life.

Suffering brings my own emptiness and God’s fullness together. I can’t imagine a better blessing.

So today, live hopefully, miraculously, and powerfully, as you practice Christ’s presence in your suffering. Hold on to the truth Christ showed us on the cross: death produces life.

Praise God that He can transform the dark soil of your pain into a place of resurrection joy.

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[ Our humble thanks to Multnomah for their humble partnership in today’s devotional. ]