AP

It’s strange to reflect that I haven’t been able to attend church in over 21 years, despite being a member of the body of Christ for almost as long as I can remember. I became very sick when I was 25, and have been housebound ever since. I have chronic dysautonomia with paroxysmal sympathetic hyperactivity—episodes of profoundly disabling neurological dysfunction lasting 4 to 12 hours.

Although the onset of my illness was very sudden and in some ways mysterious, I did have puzzling and occasionally distressing neurological symptoms from early childhood. As so often happens, even in the lives of children, my troubles drove me to God. One day my mum, admitting that she didn’t know how else to help me, encouraged me to commit my life to Christ. I quietly went to my room and did so.

I can’t remember the words I used, and since I was barely old enough to read at that time, I’m sure my understanding of the mechanics of salvation was rather limited. But I knew my Saviour and he knew me, and though an overwhelming sense of my own helplessness was all I brought to the table, it was enough to strike that most one-sided of all bargains: salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. Jesus said: “Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it” (Mark 10:15). What a wonderful thing that a childlike profession of faith in Christ from an utterly helpless person, of any age, is enough to lay hold of the promises of God!

When I fell sick so suddenly as an adult, I felt that I had lost everything except the one thing I treasured the most. “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8), and his love for me never wavered. The assurance of salvation, available to all God’s elect, has been my bedrock from my earliest years until now.

I am now back living in my childhood home. The room where I gave my life to Christ is just up the hall. The place I spend most of my time was once a living room that hosted Bible studies, youth group gatherings and even small Sunday night church services. I can look at every corner of the room and remember good things: Indonesian students singing “psalms and hymns and spiritual songs,” mum playing hymns on the piano, and dad patiently counselling newcomers to the faith. It was also in this room that dad used to sit quietly, before the day started, to spend time reading the word and praying, while I waited to tell him whatever was on my mind.

Dad, who went to be with the Lord in 2022, was very interested in the sky. During the day, no matter how housebound I am, I can look out the window and remember that “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork” (Psalm 19:1). At night I’m often reminded of Isaiah 40:26:

Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens: Who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one and calls forth each of them by name. Because of his great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing.

So while the circumstances of my life may seem very narrow, everything around me reminds me that the scope of my life is immeasurably vast, because God has put eternity into our hearts (Ecclesiastes 3:11).

I’ve been reading Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, that famous story of a rebellious man marooned on a desert island. Though he initially assumes he’s being punished by God, Crusoe changes his mind after reading a Bible he retrieved from the wreckage of his ship. He realises that God, in his sovereignty, drove him to that remote place not to punish him but to reveal his mercy:

With these reflections I worked my mind up, not only to a resignation to the will of God in the present disposition of my circumstances, but even to a sincere thankfulness for my condition; and that I, who was yet a living man, ought not to complain, seeing I had not the due punishment of my sins; that I enjoyed so many mercies which I had no reason to have expected in that place; that I ought never more to repine at my condition, but to rejoice.

… In a word, as my life was a life of sorrow one way, so it was a life of mercy another; and I wanted nothing to make it a life of comfort but to be able to make my sense of God’s goodness to me, and care over me in this condition, be my daily consolation.

I can say with full assurance that the Lord has been good to me, and his love for me has been my consolation. In the early years of my illness, when my condition was a mystery and some of the doctors I saw were less than sympathetic, I entertained the idea that one day, “in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet” (1 Corinthians 15:52), I might be granted a better understanding of the complex medical condition I’ve dealt with for most of my adult life. Now that I’m a lot older and a little bit wiser, I know this for sure: my health problems on earth will be the last thing I’ll be thinking about “when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints, and to be marvelled at among all who have believed” (2 Thessalonians 1:10).

Many years before Christ, Job, who didn’t understand the reason for his suffering, was given the grace to understand something better: he knew exactly what was in store for him after his time of trouble:

For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. My heart faints within me! (Job 19:25-27)

The symptoms of mortality are inescapable, humbling and disheartening, but we have the promise that, whatever physical shape we’re in now, we’ll be raised imperishable to see our Redeemer with our own eyes.

So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:16-18)

– Emma Louise Searle