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

I'm Not Learning How To Quit

Somewhere I read the story of a young boy trying to learn to ice-skate.  He had fallen so many times that his face was cut, and the blood and tears ran together.

Someone, out of sympathy, skated over to the boy, picked him up, and said, "Son, why don't you quit?  You are going to kill yourself!"

The boy brushed the tears from his eyes and said, "I didn't buy these skates to learn how to quit; I bought them to learn how to skate."

- submitted by Malcom McPhail, Parables, Etc. (April 1992)

Facing The Storm To Survive

A cowboy was once asked, "What important thing have you learned from your experience on the range?"

"The Herefords taught me one of life's most important lessons," he replied.  "We used to breed cattle for a living, but the winter storms would take an awful toll.  Again and again after a severe storm we would find most of our stock piled up against the fences, dead.  They would turn their backs in the icy blasts and slowly drift downward twenty miles until the fences stopped them.  There they just piled up and died.

"But the Herefords were different.  They would head straight into the wind and slowly walk the other way until they came to the upper boundary fence, where they stood still facing the storm.  We always found them alive and well.  They saved themselves by facing the storm!"

- Roy B. Zuck, The Speaker's Quote Book (Christian Literature Crusade 1997)