A Way In The Wilderness

God is leading Joni and Friends into all kinds of new ministry.

Hi, I’m Joni Eareckson Tada and it happened because of COVID-19. God used a nasty, inconvenient virus to push us out into unchartered wilderness – and not unlike the way God used a nasty, inconvenient persecution to push the early church out of Jerusalem and into Samaria and beyond. I mean, I have always known that, yes, there is a hurting world out there filled with disabilities and disease and suffering, and yes, these people need Jesus! But COVID-19 opened my eyes, the eyes of all of us at Joni and Friends, to the even greater need. Over the spring, summer and early fall, we continued to deliver wheelchairs and Bibles through our international partners, but we also kept our hand on the pulse of things, closely watching what the World Health Organization was reporting, as well as the World Institute on Disability, and we were stunned to learn that this global pandemic was decimating people with disabilities around the world. Starvation is even now on the rise among the poor, landing a crushing blow to the neediest – and that is usually people with disabilities. Food supplies are being seriously strained and so is medicine. When I read the statistics, I was appalled. And immediately, we got on the phone with our international partners in Uganda, West Africa, Asia, India. And they affirmed – it is happening. Really happening! The hunger and the famine. Yes, even severe food shortages among disabled people who have received our wheelchairs. Our partners are seeing it in outlying villages and in cities.

It is hard, oh so hard, for an impoverished family – let’s say in Central America – to keep a newborn baby with Down syndrome. What happens to that child? Believe me, you don’t want to know. Perhaps in the past the Holy Spirit told us at Joni and Friends to, “Go quickly into the streets and alleys and find the disabled.” But now, the Holy Spirit’s insisting and shouting; he’s demanding that we go quickly. And how heartbreaking it would be if a disability were only a sad omen of an even greater suffering for that person in an eternity without Christ. And so! During this season of COVID-19, our Joni and Friends’ teams and I, we’ve sought the Lord Jesus, double-downing, praying hard, thinking creatively and seeking God’s heart. And as we did, we kept hearing the Lord say, “I’m doing a new thing! I’m making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.” That’s from Isaiah 43, and we would all agree: with pandemic a part of our new-world reality, we are “in a wilderness.” None of us have been here before. But God is making a way. He is doing a whole new thing.

And we have developed exciting new ways we are reaching needy people with disabilities. We are jumping on this “new calling” and in unison, saying, “Yes, Jesus, we’ll follow you. We are going to go out as never before into the streets and alleys, finding the disabled and giving them the Good News in word and deed!” Yep, we can give the Gospel through a wheelchair, but how about food? How about wheelchair repair? How about medicine or even housing for disabled people who live under half of a leaky tin roof? So join me back here tomorrow as I describe in detail how you can be a part of pushing back the darkness on Giving Tuesday. It’s a new reality, what with COVID-19, and God has charged us to give the Gospel in fresh new ways. So, join me right here on Giving Tuesday to learn how you can play a part. And thank you for caring! So I’ll see you tomorrow right back here on this station.

© Joni and Friends

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Your gift of $220 to send a pediatric wheelchair and a Bible, $345 to send that plus medical care, food and essential hygiene supplies for a month, or $1,500 to support an entire family impacted by disability and poverty for the whole year will transform lives now and for all of eternity!