Joni Eareckson Tada: Sharing Hope

Welcome to Joni Eareckson Tada: Sharing Hope. Have you ever had a straw that broke your camel's back? Well, I just bet you have. Here's what Joni has to say about it.

Joni Eareckson Tada: I looked up that phrase today. It's an old Arab proverb and it describes the seemingly minor burden that overloads a camel's capacity to do his job. One little additional burden can cause a camel to collapse under an already heavy load. I'm no camel and neither are you, but there have been times where it's like, "Okay God, that's enough. You're piling things on here a little high. I've got enough trouble to contend with, but this new thing is adding salt to the wounds. It's adding insult to injury. I don't think I can handle it."

My problems may be different than yours, but you get the picture. For me, I have enough trouble simply contending with quadriplegia. Then add the pain, which is something extra to deal with at 4:00 AM when I wake up and my hip's hurting. It's hard, but I can manage the extra burden with God's grace. Then there's those two cancers. Now it's getting heavy. Recently, I contracted a bad cold. That felt like too much. But I plowed on. Then a week later, I got laryngitis and it's like, "Okay Lord, that's enough, please."

Not yet. My corset began rubbing a wound raw on my side causing extra problems, and that was the straw that broke my camel's back. I shared all this with one of my pain pals named Shannon. We pray for each other in our chronic pain. When I recounted my small and great burdens that nearly flattened me, she gave me such a fresh perspective. She gave me a quote from Samuel Rutherford, a Puritan from several centuries ago. He wrote, "I would wish each cross were looked in the face seven times and were read over and over again. It is the messenger of the Lord to you, and it speaks something to you."

Shannon said to me, "Joni, what you are feeling, one burden piled on top of another, is exactly what Jesus felt on the cross. Not only were His hands and legs impaled, the burden was multiplied by those thorns sticking into His skull. Then add the extra burden of the pain in His back from having been flogged. If that weren't enough, there were the additional burdens of the taunting and sneering from the crowd. Even when Jesus raised himself up on His feet to gasp for breath, even that sharp pain was another straw added to His heavy load."

Shannon added, "This is what Samuel Rutherford is talking about. The whole experience of the cross has so much to teach us. It just wasn't one agony; it was many agonies. So, I have learned to gaze at my own painful cross more than seven times and read it over and over again to glean whatever wisdom from God there may be in it."

Friend, if you're bearing a heavy load, if one thing keeps piling on top of another, the book of Hebrew says you've got a Savior who's been tested and tried just like you. He too felt the strain of that extra straw, virtually breaking His camel's back.

Take your burdens to Jesus. First Peter chapter five says cast them all on Him because He cares for you. He empathizes. He understands because He overcame His many trials that day at Calvary, and He can give you power to overcome yours. Today, take Rutherford's advice. Gaze at the cross and its lessons many times over and learn all of its insights just for you.

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