Outreach has the honor of interviewing many remarkable people in our cover interview section. These conversations—where we take unusual time and care to dig beneath the surface issues of ministry into the deeper areas that shape it—are unique in contemporary reporting on Christian ministry. While each interview is special, some are exceptionally so. One of these is that which you are about to read.
Joni Eareckson Tada is a woman who glows with love, humor, raw honesty and grit. Although a 1967 diving accident left her a quadriplegic, she emerged from rehabilitation with a determination to help others. She first became well-known through the bestselling book Joni, which sold five million copies, was translated into 38 languages, and was made into a popular feature film. In the decades since, she has become a respected global leader in disability advocacy in government (including two presidential appointments and work with the U.S. State Department), and with ministries and organizations worldwide.
Her most recent book, The Practice of the Presence of Jesus: Daily Meditations on the Nearness of Our Savior (Multnomah), combines the classic wisdom of Brother Lawrence with her inspiring reflections, drawn from her experiences of suffering and surrender—and the gifts that have come as a result.
Outreach editor-at-large Paul J. Pastor sat down with Eareckson Tada to discuss how people with disabilities reveal God’s powerful heart for the weak and broken, and how they lead all of us to a deeper understanding of his love, the difficult sacredness of suffering, and the power of beauty.
Many of our readers are familiar with the early part of your story. Can you give us an overview of the significant work that has arisen from that story, through Joni and Friends?
Joni and Friends has been in ministry for 45 years. When the book Joni was written in 1976, and then when the film came out in 1979, it generated amazing interest. Thousands of letters poured into the mailbox of our farmhouse in Maryland. So I started simply answering these letters, one by one. What did I know? I just tried to tackle the pile as best I could.
As I did so, it occurred to me that God had given me an amazing sphere of influence, extending around the world. I knew enough that I wanted to be a good steward of it. What do I need to do? became my question. Besides, I was never going to get through all the letters just sitting there at the kitchen table.
So, I talked with a few friends from Southern California, where I had worked on the movie Joni, and a few other pastors who were involved in disability ministry. They encouraged me to start a nonprofit and work to share the gospel with people with disabilities. So we did. We went for it, beginning in 1979.
We started off modestly, just traipsing around the country giving seminars—the dos and the don’ts of ministry to people with disabilities, and whatnot. But it was when I traveled internationally that I really got an eye-opener as to the full scope of our work and calling.
I remember being in the Philippines in 1989 for the Lausanne Conference on world evangelization. I was heading to a meeting in a monsoon downpour. I saw this woman on the other side of the street. I was watching her crawl across that muddy road, moving in-between traffic on her hands and knees. I’d never seen anybody crawl like that. I watched her go down an alley, where she sat back on her haunches outside the back door of a restaurant. A local pastor friend told me that she was a good woman, but that she had no resources, and that the restaurant owner would often save parts of meals that were untouched for her. Then my friend made a comment that I have never forgotten: “Things should not be this way.”
Boy, those words stuck with me. As I was flying back to Los Angeles, those words kept ringing. “Things should not be this way.” So, I said, God, I’m all in. If there’s any way you can use me to make a change in the lives of people like that woman, just count me in. I avail myself.
“Grace is like water—it always seeks the lowest level. The more we see ourselves as needy in God’s eyes, the roomier our soul is to receive his grace.”
Forty-five years later, Joni and Friends is making a big difference in the lives of people with disabilities around the world. From wheelchair distribution, to Joni’s House (which are disability centers where we provide microenterprise training), to food distribution and hygiene/healthcare services, access to medical care, to scholarships for surgeries that many people cannot afford. We work with churches locally, and we run retreats and getaways for these people and their families.
I am so grateful that I have the health I do. To do what I do—I am the most blessed quadriplegic in the world to be able to be used by God to make a difference in the lives of people who are genuinely hurting.
I’m taken by that pile of letters in the farmhouse. Are there any that you can remember, all these years later, as standing out?
Most of the letters were written asking some version of the question Why doesn’t God heal me? or How can I get my church involved? But one letter—from Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, I still remember that—was from a young man named Robert, who had cerebral palsy. He was nonverbal. He communicated with a word board. I was able to go visit him. I was escorted into his bedroom, because he never got out of bed. It had never really sunk in for me before that people could live their entire life in a bedroom. And yet he did.
He was very happy, this man. He couldn’t speak, but had a very guttural way of communicating, and I could barely make out when over and over again he moaned, “I love Jesus” with the most beautiful smile on his face. He used a head stick to point to letters on an alphabet card his mother held, composing his sentences very slowly. I was just blown away. Like I said, it had never really sunk in that there were people like this in bedrooms. Honestly, I had my calling. It was clear that God had allowed my own spinal cord injury. Now I was caring about a whole world of people with disabilities who needed help.
I love the “gospel commission” of Joni and Friends, which comes from Luke 14: “Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame. … Go out to the roads and country lanes and compel them to come in, so that my house will be full” (vv. 21, 23). What does this mean to you, that God is calling out this invitation? Bringing the suffering in before they’re healed?
Wow. What a question. When I worked on the disability advisory committee for the U.S. State Department under Condoleezza Rice, I saw even more vividly how needy our world is. People with mental illnesses being caged. Young girls with Down syndrome being sold into human trafficking. Mothers being beaten because they gave birth to a disabled child. Even here in the U.S., boys with cerebral palsy in unlicensed residential facilities being sexually abused, so much of that. And they’re not getting healed. Their problem does not get fixed. What does the gospel have to say to that? To people whose suffering doesn’t get fixed?
“Nothing will bless your congregation more than to practice a little Christianity with its sleeves rolled up.”
Well, I think that’s why the message in Luke is “go out quickly.” You can hear the groan. The Lord has seen the misery of his people. He has heard them crying out. He cannot bear their suffering any longer. He is doing everything. He is working to relieve their affliction. But he uses us. He has called us to be his hands and his feet. He’s heaven-bent on reaching these people. He’s feisty on their behalf. But we’re the ones that he has called to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke and set the oppressed free. We are. God joins us, doesn’t he?
The invitation isn’t going out to the rich friends or the relatives or the neighbors—the people we’re comfortable with. You can connect with those people, identify with them. It’s like Jesus is sending us out to invite someone we’re not comfortable with, that we don’t identify with. And bring them in quickly. I love that.
It’s an image of the upside-down nature of the gospel, isn’t it? I am reminded of the short story “Revelation” by Flannery O’Connor, in which a proud, legalistic woman has a vision of the road to heaven. She sees people that she has dismissed and whom polite society has rejected—including people with significant disabilities—as the first to enter the kingdom. In God’s eyes, they lead the way. We are led to Christ’s table by those who are weak in the eyes of the world, aren’t we?
I think this is one of the reasons why churches—especially ones that tend toward legalism—need people with disabilities. They need kids with autism, people with cerebral palsy, people with whom it’s difficult to speak. These are the people who remind us by their presence that we’re all a work in progress. We’re all frail. We’re all feeble. We’re all broken and in need of redemption. The presence of such people in our churches reminds a congregation of something that much of the church has forgotten: that the gospel is never to be conveyed from a position of power.
“Suffering cuts such deep gashes in our hearts. But it’s those openings of pain and woundedness that allows grace to more freely flow and transform us.”
We enter Christ’s kingdom through points of grace, and grace is like water—it always seeks the lowest level. The more we see ourselves as needy in God’s eyes, the roomier our soul is to receive his grace. The last shall be first in the kingdom. These are the ones, like the woman with the hemorrhage in Mark 5, who are falling on their hands and knees. Oh, if I could but touch the hem of his garment. That’s a great picture of faith, isn’t it? It’s just recognizing, I can’t do this without Jesus.
Some people have needs that produce groans so guttural that only God can understand them. These are the people that show us all how needy we are. Suffering cuts such deep gashes in our hearts. But it’s those openings of pain and woundedness that allows grace to more freely flow and transform us. People with disabilities show the way.
It sounds like any work with people with disabilities or the marginalized shouldn’t just be some side ministry but rests at the core of the church’s life and calling. In your experience, is it a shift for many churches to think about it in that way?
Oh yes. The body of Christ shouldn’t look all picture-perfect. We’re people of the cross. That means we immerse ourselves in the messiness of humanity, its dirtiness and its suffering. We dive into the blood of injustices. We are people of the cross.
Think of it: Our Savior was ripped to shreds and hung up to drain blood like a piece of slaughtered meat. That’s who we identify with. The gospel was given birth right there at the cross. If we are to share the gospel of that messy cross with others, shouldn’t our churches be a little messy too? We don’t need to whitewash suffering. We don’t need fancy euphemisms to strip the pain from harsh realities. We participate in the sufferings of others, just as we participate in Christ’s suffering.
Churches would serve themselves well to have their disability ministry front and center. When the kid with cerebral palsy is yelling out in the church sanctuary because he’s so excited about the hymn that’s being sung, not to see that as a disruption to be quieted, but as a sound to be celebrated. Maybe that kind of sound is needed. Maybe God delights in it.
“What I thought was the ruin of my life—a broken neck—was the beginning of God’s greatest use of my life.”
When a disability occurs, it is always an unwelcome reality in our lives at first, but then when we dig deep we will find there is more there. There are blessings which you would never have dreamed would be there. Isn’t that just like God?
The thing I despised was the thing God used to do something awesome. I’m very grateful. What I thought was the ruin of my life—a broken neck—was the beginning of God’s greatest use of my life. And you know what’s funny? I never would have believed that, had you told me that when I broke my neck. I was angry. But slowly—slowly. Things grow slowly, don’t they?
Tell me what The Practice of the Presence of Jesus means to you. What can we learn from Brother Lawrence today?
When I first read Brother Lawrence, it seemed like every high-school and college-age kid was reading his classic The Practice of the Presence of God. I was enamored of this Catholic monk just for his cut-to-the-heart yet gentle phrases. I think I was even more fascinated by his life as a monk who was assigned menial tasks of cleaning floors and scrubbing pots. I took my old tattered copy of his book off the shelf during COVID-19. And it seemed so familiar to me. This is the way I’m living, I thought. That daily-ness of practicing the presence.
“When we trust God with our afflictions, when we do a little bit of drastic obedience, we are increasing our soul’s capacity for joy and worship and service in heaven.”
Practicing the presence of Jesus—I was in the hospital last year for a combined 45 days with two bouts of double pneumonia. My husband and I said to each other, “This isn’t a detour. This is the main highway.” So, what did God want us to do?
Well, what else would God want us to do, but reach the unreached? We made it our goal to every day practice Jesus in someone’s life. Like at 4 a.m., when the night nurse, whose name was James, came in to take my vitals and put them on the chart. It was dark out, and he flipped on a little lamp. I looked up at him pumping the little pump for my blood pressure, and just said, “Oh James, you’re so like Jesus.”
And he just looks at me and says, “Why do you say that?”
“Well,” I said, “it says in the Bible that Jesus came not to be served, but to serve—and here you are serving. And in the Old Testament it says that he who helps the needy, honors God. And James, that’s what you’re doing. I’m the needy. That’s your good work for the day, sir.”
That’s practicing the presence of Jesus—just finding ways to do that.
That’s why I wrote the book, The Practice of the Presence of Jesus. I wanted people to grasp how one old lady in a wheelchair does it in hopes that it inspires them to do the same. And oh, I cannot wait to meet Brother Lawrence in heaven. What a joy that’s going to be. So many of his sayings are gentle and yet firm. Meaty. He inspires me to not languish but to rest in the overflow of God’s heart.
“There’s nothing more heavenly than finding Jesus in your hell.”
I remember once when I had cancer, that I had to go through a long regimen of chemotherapy. I was so sick and so weak. I had lost so much weight. I was coming home from chemo one day in the van, and Ken and I were talking about how suffering is like little splash-overs of hell—little spoonfuls to get you thinking.
As we were driving down the 101 here in California, we began thinking of what are splash-overs of heaven? Are they easy-breezy bright days, where the birds are singing and the sun is shining down, and all your bills are paid? We decided no. We pulled up in the driveway, still thinking about it. No, the splash-over of heaven is finding Jesus in your splash-over of hell. There’s nothing more heavenly than finding Jesus in your hell. And that’s what Ken and I experience. We often reflect now, 10 years after cancer, that those moments were the sweetest moments we ever had together.
God gets on the floor with us when we’re down for the count.
A significant part of your work has included visual art, which comes from that place of faith. What, to you, is the importance of beauty in the context of suffering?
When you find Christ in your suffering, my goodness. Life is so wonderful. Life is suddenly wonderful. Beauty exists to point us to God, and reminds us that there is more to life than merely functioning. Beautiful art ennobles our spirit. It carries us to higher things, more exalted things. I think we all know what it’s like to be transported from the ordinary to the sublime. When we hear a beautiful symphony, or watch a flash of light across some high mountain, or enjoy a special meal, we recognize these things as beautiful. And that’s when life is full of joy and satisfaction.
You could be suffering awfully, but suddenly, because of beauty, life feels worthwhile. Just the dapple of sunlight over grass—I mean, sometimes I wheel out the front door, and it’s so beautiful. Just my little yard with the trees and the bushes. And all of a sudden, “How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord God Almighty, my soul yearns, even faints for the courts of the Lord” (Ps. 84:1–2). Life is beautiful then, and you don’t even know you’re in a wheelchair.
“God gets on the floor with us when we’re down for the count.”
God built beauty into our world that we might experience him. Beauty is a testimony to his own loveliness and creativity. Because God transcends the ordinary, he intends that beauty should do the same. Good art elevates, and it all points us up. Our thoughts intersect with his. Beauty should always point us to God. Our culture has a problem with that. Our culture seems to have a fascination with ugliness. It’s in our books, in our movies, in our music.
I have a garden of roses. It’s small, but the roses are beautiful. And I think, God, look what you did. You created this to showcase how fragrant you are. You did this. I glorify you in this moment. That should be our response to beauty.
I was listening to a Romanze by Schumann two nights ago, a piece that I love. I took 10 years of piano when my hands worked, and this one was one of my very favorite pieces. Listening to it, I felt bathed in its beauty. God, that you made someone who could make this—that you inspired someone to write this. Beauty makes life worthwhile, and it points us to God.
Let’s turn back toward the church for a moment. Being led to that beauty by people with disabilities makes a lot of sense. You see the light so starkly when there are shadows. What can pastors and churches do to better welcome people with disabilities?
Well, let’s sit with the word “community” for a while. The very word makes me think of supporting, loving, serving and leading—all these wonderful things that we do for one another. But the church needs to go a step further than they’re used to going to embrace families struggling with disability. Maybe it’s because the needs are so great.
Many families don’t darken the doors of a church because on Sunday morning they’re just trying to hold life together by their fingers and their toes with a couple of kids with autism, or whatever. I think of some of the families that we serve at our family retreats. They have locks on their doors and windows because their children are constantly trying to escape. Locks on the refrigerator, locks on everything. How does a church minister to a family like that? Well, you get to know them. And if you as a pastor do not have time, then find somebody who will, who has a heart for people who struggle with disabling conditions.
And when these people do come to your church, find ways for them to use their spiritual gifts. Don’t segregate them out. Don’t make some token outreach. Get rid of a condescending mindset. This isn’t about pity—we’re all broken. We’re all frail and in need of transformation. In that, the disabled lead the way. Give them a voice. Give them an opportunity to exercise their gifts. Listen to these people. Find a way for your church to be able to participate in their sufferings.
Nothing will bless your congregation more than to practice a little Christianity with its sleeves rolled up. Many families struggling with disabilities just don’t feel like the church is there. It’s a hard thing.
“Good art elevates, and it all points us up. Beauty should always point us to God.”
Pastors should take a hint from Jesus himself, who said in Luke 14, “Go out quickly.” Bring these people in so that the Father’s house may be full. That house won’t be full until all stripes of people, with abilities and disabilities, from every tribe, tongue and nation, are included in his house.
I so look forward to heaven. Not as an escape from reality, but as a chance to hear my Savior say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” And I’m of the opinion of Jonathan Edwards, who said that when we trust God with our afflictions, when we do a little bit of drastic obedience, we are increasing our soul’s capacity. We are enlarging our eternal estate. We are increasing our capacity for joy and worship and service in heaven.
What thought would you want to leave with us?
Just this—I don’t want to waste my own suffering. I don’t want to waste my calling to others who suffer. I want to make every moment count. I don’t want to be a mediocre Christian. You know? The Savior calls for courageous, valiant men and women who love him and want to do everything to get his gospel to those who need it.
Just listen to these words of calling and of promise [from Isa. 35:3–6]: “Strengthen the feeble hands, steady the knees that give way; say to those with fearful hearts, ‘Be strong, do not fear; your God will come …’ Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then will the lame leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy” (Isa. 35:3–6).
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Four Books Joni recommends related to disability:
- The Long Good Night: My Father’s Journey into Alzheimer’s by Daphne Simpkins
- Blame It on the Brain: Distinguishing Chemical Imbalances, Brain Disorders, and Disobedience by Edward Welch
- Depression: Looking Up From the Stubborn Darkness by Edward Welch
- Same Lake, Different Boat by Stephanie Hubach