Living with Limits

Living with a chronic illness is limiting, as anyone who has a physical or mental disorder will tell you. I remember my grandmother as bedridden by rheumatoid arthritis, but still able to play games like anagrams and offer us cashews as treats. Years earlier she had graduated from Wellesley College, taught school, married shortly after World War 1, and had 2 children. Due to her debilitating disease, she gradually became less mobile: cane to crutches to wheelchair and finally to invalid. Nevertheless, she remained positive, playful, informed, and connected to family and friends. She adapted and lived into her seventies.

In recent days when our coming and going has been curtailed, when we are encouraged to stay home to reduce contagion by the conoravirus, we may feel frustrated and restless. That’s normal. Our plans and schedules have been interrupted. 

We are beginning to realize that all of us live with limitations. For the safety of others and ourselves we choose to sacrifice our personal freedom to go and do whatever we like, whenever we like. We are realizing anew that essential resources are limited like masks, tests, ventilators, and medication. We are acknowledging that the world is more complex and interconnected than we had imagined. No one person or country can solve today’s problems.

Perhaps that’s why God the Creator, who is infinite and omniscient, stepped into our world in the person of Jesus Christ. “For God so loved this world that he sent his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” (John 3:16) God’s original plan was not to condemn the world, but to save it through his Son. This is the only perfect and fail proof plan I know. It takes you from this earthly life into eternity, under God’s rule. Only then will we experience life whole and healed.