Where God Is – October 20, 2002
Stuart’s fondest childhood memory is a baseball game. It wasn’t the big leagues—just a backyard game played on the hot grass of summer with makeshift bases. Stuart doesn’t remember winning or losing; he remembers the game because it was the last time he could run.
Shortly afterward, Stuart was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy.
He was seven years old, and ahead of him lay numerous operations and doctor visits. At one point, when he was nine years old, his family collected the last of their savings and sent Stuart off to another city for a rare operation. There wasn’t enough money for his father to go along with him. As the two sat together in the airport—Stuart in his wheelchair, and his worried father beside him—Stuart wondered how he would ever make it alone. Tearfully, his father pulled a white handkerchief from his pocket and tucked it in the young boy’s hand. “When it gets too hard to handle on your own,” he told his young son, “hold this and think of me, and I’ll be with you.”
None of us is really alone in our trials. We have a Father in Heaven who is watching over us—a God who created us and cares about us. Just thinking about Him will comfort us in our trials. Calling on Him will not always release us from difficulties, but it will help us to understand them. Sometimes His purpose is not to take away our adversity but to support us through it until we emerge stronger in spirit.
Stuart eventually earned a Ph.D. and now influences hundreds of lives for the better in the college classroom—a role he admits he never would have pursued had he not been refined by his physical challenges. And he still carries the handkerchief with him to remind him of his father—and his Father in Heaven.
Program #3818