Abiding In Christ

MY BONE DENSITY SCAN last week should have been a breeze . . . but it wasn’t. For most patients, this medical test means slipping into a surgical gown, hopping on the table, and taking a ten-minute nap while the scanner does its thing.

But I’m not most patients.

To begin with, the scanner was in a tiny closet of a room, barely wide enough for my wheelchair. Heaving me onto the table was no easy feat; it took two men to do it. Then Ken nearly wrenched his back positioning my body in line with the machine. After the scan, it took way more time than you would think to get me dressed on the table and back into my wheelchair. When it was over, Ken and I were both exhausted.

After all these years, you would think quadriplegia would get easier. That it would begin to fit like an old slipper. But it doesn’t. If anything, it gets more burdensome as the years go by. Through that whole ordeal at the doctor’s, I was praying, “Oh, Lord, give us grace, give us grace. Jesus, oh, Lord, help us!” But then again, I always pray that way. My paralysis and my wheelchair have me constantly asking God for help. You sometimes hear people talk about “abiding in Christ” as if it were some super-saintly level of spiritual life. But for me, it’s a daily, hourly necessity. I dare not separate myself from Jesus—my disability just won’t allow it!

In John 15:5, Jesus said, “I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing” (ESV). In a recent blog, Joshua Harris reminded his readers that we’re not like iPhones or iPads that need an occasional charge. No, we need to stay plugged into Jesus 24-7. Harris wrote, “Jesus doesn’t say ‘I am [the] power cord [and] you are the cell phone.’ He says, ‘I’m the vine. You’re the branch.’ [There’s a huge difference.] . . . Abiding is what desperate people do who realize that they have no life, power, no inward resource of themselves.”

That is the one great positive of quadriplegia. My disability makes me constantly aware that I am a totally dependent on Jesus. Branches don’t separate themselves from the vine and live independent lives. No, a separated branch is a dying branch. Its leaves begin to wither immediately.

Branches are part of the Vine, and they’re supposed to act like it. So, my friend, you be the branch that relaxes in, abides in, and draws strength from Jesus Christ, the true and living Vine.

GOING DEEPER . . .

But blessed are those who trust in the Lord

and have made the LORD their hope and confidence.

They are like trees planted along a riverbank,

with roots that reach deep into the water.

Such trees are not bothered by the heat

or worried by long months of drought.

Their leaves stay green,

and they never stop producing fruit.

Jeremiah 17:7-8, NLT

Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the LORD your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the LORD is your life.

Deuteronomy 30:19-20

Lord, thank You that You are my very life. My life is hidden in Yours. I draw my identity, my strength, my wisdom, my righteousness, my salvation, my hope, and my joy directly from You and nowhere else. In You I live and move and have my being. Forgive me for imagining I have some limited “battery life” and can live on my own for even one minute. I can’t . . . and what’s more, I don’t want to. In Your strong name, Amen.