Archive for February, 2010

A Guest Post from Nancy Guthrie

Years ago, I stood at the back of a hotel ballroom listening to Joni Eareckson Tada speak and wondered to myself, “What is it that makes her so compelling? What makes people listen to what she has to say so closely?” And the answer to my question was obvious. It’s her suffering. Joni’s suffering gives her credibility to speak. We listen because she lives where only our deepest fears take us. And we listen because the way she articulates how she has made sense of her suffering helps us to make sense of ours.

Years later, when I met Joni, I told her that I hoped that I would be as good a steward of my suffering as she has been of hers. But I fear that is too lofty an aim, too high a hurdle. Joni not only shows me and the rest of the world how to persevere as a faithful steward of suffering, she shows us how to serve out of our suffering and how to radiate joy in the midst of our suffering. Mostly she shows us what it looks like to love Jesus even as she lives day-by-day in the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings.

That is why I dedicated Be Still My Soul: Embracing God’s Purpose and Provision in Suffering to Joni. And in the piece written by Joni in the collection of great writing and biblical insight into the questions that surround suffering, Joni speaks to exactly why I put this collection together. She writes:

There was a time when I was content to wade ankle-deep in the things of God. But that was before I snapped my neck under the weight of a dive into shallow water, and a severed spinal cord left my body limp and useless. Permanent and total paralysis smashed me up against the study of God. And in the weak, sleepless hours of my early injury, I wrestled with questions about why and how this had happened to me.

Most of us are content to “wade ankle-deep in the things of God” until something happens that forces us to come to terms with our shallow ideas about who God is and how and why he works. And usually it is an experience of suffering that sends us on that search. In our confusion, while the heart has to be wooed by the love of God and the will has to submit to the sovereignty of God, so the mind has to be renewed by the truth of God. The full truth about God’s sovereignty in our suffering can at first be a hard place to land, but ultimately we recognize that it is the solid ground of our greatest comfort.

In Be Still My Soul, I chose material from great classic and contemporary theologians and Bible teachers who clearly and convincingly deal with the questions I have had in suffering, and the questions I know so many others have had. With clarity and compassion, they lead us into the deeper waters of understanding the things of God in terms of suffering, so that even in the midst of stormy waters, our souls can be stilled.