turning the big 1-0-0 and a good story

This is my 100th blog! Hip hip hooray!

I don't really have anything more to say about that.

So...on to the story:

This past Sunday, at church, a man named Wayne gave his testimony. Wayne is about 6'4", 260-270lbs...built like an ox. He is very much the strong, silent type.

Well...he was the strong, silent type.

Earlier this summer, Wayne's wife came home from work late at night and found him laying on the floor, awake but unable to move. He had a stroke and had been lying there for hours. He spent weeks in the hospital and his improvements have come very slowly.

This was Wayne's first Sunday back at church. And I noticed something different about him. It wasn't the fact that he is in a wheelchair, or that only one eye now opens. No, there was something else. His smile was bigger and he had more life in his face than I had ever remembered.

He wheeled forward at the end of the sermon and spoke about the poor state of his spiritual life before his stroke and his renewed vigor for Christ after it. There were few dry eyes in the room. I want to share with you the bit that got me:

"I was strong, healthy and in good shape. There was no reason for this to happen. And the doctors still don't have an answer for why it did. God did this to me. He did it to me because He cares more about my soul than He does my body. My body will mend. Christ will restore it when He comes back. But the soul is eternal. And for that, He needed to get my attention."

Those words, from the crooked mouth of a debilitated man in a wheelchair, were as powerful as anything I have ever heard from the pulpit.

Wayne is no longer strong. But, thank God, he's no longer silent either.