Relationship and Meaning

Author: Stan Guthrie
September 15, 2020

My birth on August 1, 1961, two months early, did not go well. Only three pounds and 11 ounces, I beat the odds and survived. But for the rest of my life I would carry the burden of cerebral palsy.

Through the years I have often asked “Why?” and it was hard not to feel resentful. Most of the time I felt like an inferior, an outsider, afraid of rejection. And sometimes I was rejected.

One night I remember looking up at the countless stars splashed across the silent sky. In the darkness my mother said it was hard to believe that all this could have just happened–but I wasn’t so sure. My experience led me to suspect that the universe was cold, indifferent, and meaningless. God, if he existed, was either too busy to care or too weak to help.

But needing something to believe in beyond this life, I turned to science fiction, UFOs, and “pyramid power.” I also began reading books about the end of the world, and that got me into the Bible.

As I read it, I realized that my life could only have meaning if I were properly related to the God who created me, just as I was. And this was a God I had never expected: One who was personally, painfully involved already.

He came to earth as a Man, Jesus Christ, to live the perfect life I had failed to live and to voluntarily die on the cross in my place–in short, to pay for my sins–including the bitterness, the self-centeredness, and all the rest.

Moreover, he understood my frustrating disability. On his way to the cross, Jesus had publicly stumbled and fallen. I could relate. Suspended between heaven and earth, Christ’s weakness was exposed for all to see. And yet because he was raised from the dead, someday I too would be raised, with a powerful new resurrection body. That was an offer I couldn’t refuse!

I wish I could say that since receiving Christ all of my insecurities have evaporated, and I no longer have doubts about God’s love. But that wouldn’t be honest. My disability has shaped not just my body, but also my soul. Even though I now sense God’s presence daily, it will probably take me the rest of my life to overcome my insecurities–but, slowly, I’m getting there!

One day, Jesus’ disciples asked, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?” The Lord said that the man’s disability presented a divine opportunity, “that the works of God might be displayed in him.”

Undoubtedly I will face more frustrations and heartaches. Yet today I can accept my disability in a way I never could before, because Christ’s power is most clearly seen not in my strength, but in my weakness.

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