The sound of those crutches
OPINION —
Now that walking is impossible for me without the use of a walker, it helps to remember friends who endured far worse physical pain without complaining. Their example inspires me to cease whining about a minor inconvenience on my way to heaven.
One of those examples was a young preacher in Nashville. Dean and I were 22, and I was a seminary student at Vanderbilt University Divinity School. We lived within a block of a Methodist Church in south Nashville. With our infant son David, less than a year old, we began worshipping there. When the pastor, Tom Chappell, learned that I was studying for the ministry, he offered me a part-time job working with the youth. I quickly discovered that Tom, who needed crutches to walk, was a remarkable man.
Less that 40 years old, Tom had been crippled by rheumatoid arthritis. Crippled so severely that he could no longer stand erect. When preaching, he sat on a special stool positioned behind the pulpit. Using his crutches, he would thrust his twisted body upon the stool without assistance.
I never heard Tom complain about his condition. Not once. He neither expected nor asked for sympathy. He went about his pastoral work with a cheerful spirit, never asking to be excused from any of his duties because he was a disabled person. His preaching was inspiring and passionate. I was amazed by his courage and his capacity to smile while enduring pain every time he moved his limbs.
After working with Tom for almost a year, I was devastated by the news that our son had leukemia with probably less than two years to live. Tom provided pastoral support for us not only on Sunday; he began coming by our home on weekdays to cheer us up and pray for us. I can shut my eyes and still hear the sound of his crutches on our doorstep. Hearing that sound meant a servant of Jesus was coming up those steps.
Our front door was 13 steps up from the sidewalk, so we could hear Tom coming before he knocked on the door. Once inside, he would chat with us for a while and then get down on the floor and play with David, letting him sometimes play with his crutches. Tom was just being Tom, but he was doing more than playing with a sick child. He was teaching me secrets of pastoral ministry that were not taught in the seminary.
One day I explained to Tom that the cortisone medicine caused serious side effects for David, one of which caused him to become very irritable. Tom listened patiently but never admitted what I learned two years later – that Tom was receiving cortisone shots himself.
That partly explains why Tom was a remarkable man. He was able to ignore his own crippling pain and focus entirely on a child, offering loving encouragement to young parents struggling to understand why their little boy was dying. Years later I realized that inside Tom’s crippled body was a perfect heart in which Jesus was Lord. I not only admired and respected Tom. I wanted to be like him, for he was the epitome of a true servant of Jesus.
So, when I stop and listen, and hear in my memory the sound of those crutches on our doorsteps, I remember that God is always sending his love to the front door of all my problems. I just need to stop moaning and let him in. God used Tom Chappell to teach me that when Jesus is everything, nothing — not even crutches — can stop us from living as servants of Jesus.