Making the best of the worst
By TIM KLIEWER
Pastor, Trinity Mennonite Church
In last year's January "Reader's Digest" there is a story about a young man named Kyle. Kyle Maynard was born with some of the birth defects that every parent fears — stunted arms and legs and misshapen hands and feet. Most people would consider him to be handicapped. But most people don't know Maynard.
This young man, who chooses not to use prosthetic limbs, constantly challenges himself to break physical barriers. He played middle school football alongside much bigger kids. In high school, he began weight training and joined the wrestling team. He and his coach developed moves that made the most of Kyle's physical assets. Kyle advanced so much that he earned the title "Strongest Teen," for his weightlifting feats.
In fact, Maynard has such a positive attitude that a juvenile court judge once sentenced a troublesome kid to spend the day with Kyle. The judge wanted the teen to understand that our lives are shaped much more by our attitude than by our circumstances. After spending a day with the troubled teen, Kyle commented, "People think I have a bad life. Look at my life compared to this kid's. I have a beautiful family who loves me. Everybody has struggles. My struggles are just more apparent."
Isn't that amazing? You and I see people every day with perfectly good bodies, healthy in every way, who are mired in unhappiness. And then we run into a Kyle Maynard with his stunted arms and misshapen hands and feet, and he is so positive. How does that happen? Obviously it helps to have people who love you and believe in you.
We are all familiar with the promise of Romans 8:28 but we tend to ignore verse 29 and miss the context. Verse 28: "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose." That sounds great but verse 29 tells us why: "For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers." (NIV)
The purpose for some things, even bad things happening to us is we will be conformed to the likeness of his Son. God wants to make us into someone like Jesus.
A case in point was made by Ravi Zacharias, the gifted apologist (defender of the faith) of our time, on his Jan. 3 radio broadcast, Just Thinking.
"One of the most beautiful women who has ever lived from the Christian vantage point who has written some magnificent hymns was Annie (Johnston) Flint. Flint was born into the Johnston home where her birth caused the death of her mother and shortly after that her father died. She was raised by the Flint family.
"After she graduated from college she contracted arthritis in one of its most crippling forms and was forced to lay in bed for the rest of her life. If that wasn't bad enough she lost control of her internal organs and became incontinent and to her embarrassment, lived on diapers for the rest of her life. If that wasn't humiliating enough she began to go blind and also began a battle with cancer.
"Here is a woman: orphaned, arthritic, incontinent, blind, lying there almost motionless in bed. One eyewitness who wrote her biography, "The Making of the Beautiful," said the last time he saw her she had seven pillows cushioning her body to try and keep the bed sores from causing her indescribable agony."
The most beautiful hymn she ever wrote is this:
"He giveth more grace when the burden grows greater, He sendeth more strength when the labors increase. To added affliction He addeth His mercy, to multiplied trials, His multiplied peace.
"When we have exhausted our store of endurance; When our strength has failed ere the day is half done; When we reach the end of our hoarded resources: Our Father's full giving is only begun.
"His love has no limit. His grace has no measure. His pow'r has no boundary known to men. For out of His infinite riches in Jesus, He giveth and giveth and giveth again."
Ravi then added, "Suppose I were to tell you, you too could write songs like that, and someone would write your biography if you're willing to get arthritis, incontinence, blindness, and be orphaned. How many of you would respond to that invitation?
"That," Ravi says, "is the hell of pain. It is most beautiful to you when it is on somebody else."
I suspect that you, like me, would rather not go through the torment of inadequacy and handicap in order to learn such truths as expressed in her hymn.
My question for us today is: "What will it take this year to make us willing to be conformed more and more to the likeness of God's Son?
