A man was born with a neurological condition that makes his eyes constantly shake back and forth. The condition can be subtle, or it can get worse due to stress or dizziness. When he was around 12 years old, a kid at school said, “Can you look somewhere else, you’re freaking me out!” That comment seared his mind and made him start to mask himself from others, avoiding eye contact. He explained that a deep hurt and anger settled in toward God, doctors, and his parents about his situation during his adolescent years.
After completing his undergraduate degree, he went on a mission trip to India for the summer. One day, there were children from an orphanage all around him, making the universal sign that they wanted him to pick them up and spin them around. He did it to one child, and then another, and then a third, fourth, and fifth. After five, the dizziness caused his eyes to shake very badly, and he fell over. Two of the orphan girls gasped when they saw his eyes and ran away. Once again, he felt decades of shame, anger, and embarrassment wash over him because the girls were freaked out by him.
Then he saw the girls in the distance dragging another girl toward him. He thought they were being cruel by forcing her to look at the freak American. Instead, the girls plopped their friend down in front of him. When he looked into her eyes, he saw that hers were shaking too.
When she saw his eyes shaking, she immediately jumped up into his arms and the two of them held each other, weeping at the joy of being understood and not alone. Something amazing happened in both of their lives at that encounter. The man says that, “God actually used the thing I most wish wasn’t true of me to convey and communicate his love for that girl.” The orphanage wrote to him some weeks after summer, explaining that she had changed from someone withdrawn and always keeping in the back to a leader for Christ in her community.
That man’s name is Ian Simkins. Today, he pastors The Bridge Church in Tennessee. You can see him share that story in this Facebook reel: https://www.facebook.com/reel/4408291666064651
2 Corinthians 5:18-19: “All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.”
All believers have been commissioned as ministers of reconciliation. God will use everything we do and every part of who we are to accomplish the task. Not only strengths, but weaknesses, not only successes, but failures of the past. God can redeem it all and use it for his kingdom if we are willing to live on mission.
John Riley
Junior High Pastor