A Meaningful Life Despite An Injury

Dennis Byrd was an up-and-coming defensive superstar for the New York Jets, who was expected to help turn the Jets around. But on November 29, 1992, when the Jets were playing the Chiefs, Byrd was about to sack the quarterback when he collided with a teammate. His spinal cord snapped.

He awoke in the middle of the night at Lenox Hospital in a halo brace, not knowing where he was, why he couldn’t move, and what was happening. Suddenly, he went from dreaming of making it to the Pro Bowl to hoping that someday he could once more hold his daughter in his arms.

From a worldly perspective, Byrd was no longer able to reach his potential. But in God’s eyes, Byrd was capable of more than sacking quarterbacks. As the world watched and listened, Byrd told the media that Christ was his source of comfort in his time of tragedy. The doctors said Byrd would likely never walk again, but Byrd said that with God’s help, he would.

On opening day of the 1993 football season, less than a year after his spinal-cord injury, Byrd walked to the middle of the Meadowlands Stadium while 75,000 fans cheered. The miracle in Byrd’s life is not that he broke his neck and walked again. The miracle is that the injury that destroyed his career didn’t destroy his life.

 — Steve May, Sermonnotes.com

There Is Something Waiting For Me

A self-made millionaire Eugene Lang greatly changed the lives of a sixth-grade class in East Harlem.  Mr. Lang had been asked to speak to a class of the fifty-nine sixth-graders.  What could he say to inspire these students, most of whom would drop out of school?  He wondered how he could get these predominantly black and Puerto Rican children even to look at him.

Scrapping his notes, he decided to speak to them from his heart.  "Stay in school," he admonished, "and I'll help pay the college tuition of every one of you."

At that moment the lives of those student changed.  For the first time they had hope.

One student said, "I had something to look forward to, something waiting for me.  It was a golden feeling."

Nearly ninety percent of that class went on to graduate from high school.

- Parade magazine

Hoping Mommy's Home

A wife was diagnosed with breast cancer.  After two operations and radiation treatment, she showed signs of improvement.  There was hope that she might beat this dreaded disease.  But three years later, her small body succumbed to the insidious growth.  She was survived by her husband and two children who were only three and five at the time of her death.

Immediately after the funeral, the three went for a brief vacation.  When they were pulling the car into the driveway upon their return, the three-year-old boy expressed the hope of everyone in the car, "Maybe Mommy's home."

- Craig A. Smith, Sermon Illustrations for an Asian Audience (OMF Literature Inc., 2004)