{"id":10537,"date":"2015-02-27T13:45:22","date_gmt":"2015-02-27T21:45:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/?p=10537"},"modified":"2015-02-27T15:08:27","modified_gmt":"2015-02-27T23:08:27","slug":"little-ebenezer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/2015\/02\/27\/little-ebenezer\/","title":{"rendered":"Little Ebenezer"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Ebenezer-1300\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Here’s little Ebenezer, his crooked foot barely visible in the painting. If you want to see that video again, it’s here.<\/a><\/em><\/h6>\n

This time last week we were putting in the last day on that big mural for Joni and Friends<\/em>. I’ve been grateful for the abundant feedback on the last blog that released the video. It’s been going all over Facebook as people are getting a visual reminder of a basic teaching of Jesus–to not forget\u00a0the disabled among us.<\/p>\n

This is all close to home as we continue to deal with our dear Vernon, still in a rehab facility, and not always making the kind of progress we’d like. Even when he gets out, he’ll be in a wheelchair for who knows how long?<\/p>\n

At least there are wheelchairs, something still not so in much of the world. In many places a person might be confined to a bed or a room virtually all their lives without being able to get around. A wheelchair can be a breath of freedom when it comes.<\/p>\n

Bless the various groups that work to provide them. We were heartened again to hear of Joni and Friends<\/em>‘ recent landmark of the 100,000th wheelchair donated. It went to little Ebenezer in Ghana, a survivor of polio which left his legs all wrong and feet\u00a0bent permanently down.<\/p>\n

He was one of those featured in the mural, and that happy face is now apparently as permanent as his foot condition.<\/p>\n

At last week’s conference I was impressed with many things. One memorable remark was in the closing plenary talk by founder Joni Erickson Tada, a dynamic woman who’s a quadriplegic and has been confined to a wheelchair all of her adult life.<\/p>\n

She said, \u201cWhen I get to heaven, I want to take my wheelchair with me. I know that’s not theological. But when I’m standing there next to the Lord, the wheelchair on the other side, I’ll want to say, ‘Lord, you said that in the world we would have troubles. And that wheelchair has been nothing but trouble. Useful enough, yes, but now you can\u00a0send that thing straight to hell.’\u201d<\/p>\n

Here’s a short video about little Ebenezer<\/a>. Don’t watch it if you don’t want your heart broken.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

About wheelchairs, their blessing and curse . . . and those among us blessed to use them (and cursed).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10537"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10537"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10537\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10561,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10537\/revisions\/10561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}