The Heartbeats of a Cripple Will Save The World
The Heartbeats of a Cripple Will Save The World
The world will be saved only when we give up trying to save it.
For some time, I’ve mourned unhealthily over my helplessness in the face of evil. It’s led to black days and sleepless nights. But each time, God quiets my heart, usually in very personal ways that wouldn’t be helpful to share.
More recently, however, He’s spoken to me through the writings of fellow saints—crippled ones. Their words have built up strong walls around my heart to prevent despair’s very approach. It’s a feeling of great security. I think the best description is “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things unseen.”
I am unable to express myself as clearly as I would wish. I feel like the diseased woman grasping at the fringe of Christ’s garment, letting it whisk through my fingers, the healing power flooding my body before I can ask how or why. But it is healing me, and it is healing the world. Coming through the intellect as truth, this healing power can speak to anyone. So, I will begin an attempt to cobble together these writings that speak so beautifully to our desire for peace.
The pulse of the world races. Dietitians, Gaza, trafficking, Trump, Russia, inflation, obesity, virus, up, up, up until cardiac arrest. Fast, fearsome, foxhunt, fleesome all must return to a steady state of rest.
But how?
Through the soaring of eagles and the running of strong men, the excellence of our horses and chariots? Is this what we put our trust in? Through missions, and good behavior, and social movements, and political victories, boycotts, civil disobedience, pious church attendance, and honest, hard work? Is this what we must do? Are we strong enough? Wise enough? Can we work to become so?
No.
The heartbeats of a cripple will save the world.
3 Crippled Saints
In 1948, a Romanian Lutheran pastor was thrown into a dark dungeon and drugged by his captors until he could not longer walk, or speak, or even think. It became impossible for him to concentrate his mind even enough to say, ‘Jesus, I love You.’” But at this point of utter helplessness, the man still felt the peace of Christ. He could not think, but he prayed with the only speech left to him—the beating of a loving heart. And that is how he spent three years of solitary confinement—in the prayer of his heartbeat. “The highest form of prayer that I know,” Richard Wurmbrand later wrote in Preparing for The Underground Church, “is the quiet beating of a heart that loves Him.”
Sometime in the mid-19th century, a Russian peasant with a withered arm lost everything and, unable to work, struck out as a penniless pilgrim on the road, devoting himself to discovering the secret of how to pray without ceasing. Eventually he found it in the internal repetition of “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.”
“After spending five months in this lonely life of prayer and such happiness as this, I grew so used to the prayer that I went on with it all the time. In the end I felt it going on of its own accord within my mind and in the depths of my heart, without any urging on my part. Not only when I was awake, but even during sleep, just the same thing went on. Nothing broke into it, and it never stopped even for a single moment, whatever I might be doing. My soul was always giving thanks to God and my heart melted away with unceasing happiness.” (The Way of a Pilgrim).
As he continued on his way through the world, he prayed constantly to his heartbeat, and wherever he stopped to spend the night, the people there thought he was a holy man. But he shook them off, wanting only to keep on praying.
A Frenchman, once a soldier, joined a monastery in the mid-17th century, where he was put to work in the kitchen. He was clumsy, had suffered his whole life from a leg injury sustained in battle which sent crippling waves of sciatic pain through his body. He became known, in time, for his peace and wisdom, despite his lack of religious training and his constant physical suffering. Against his wishes (for he was ever humble), a cleric collected this man’s wisdom down on paper and published it, so that three-hundred years later, we can benefit from his counsel.
“[God] does not ask much of us, merely a thought of Him from time to time, a little act of adoration, sometimes to ask for His grace, sometimes to offer Him your sufferings, at other times to thank Him for the graces, past and present, He has bestowed on you, in the midst of your troubles to take solace in Him as often as you can. Lift up your heart to Him during your meals and in company; the least little remembrance will always be the most pleasing to Him. One need not cry out very loudly; He is nearer to us than we think. (Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God)
Sung to a slow and simple tune, this hymn expresses the essence of prayer in a way that each one of these men understood it:
“Prayer is the soul's sincere desire
Uttered or unexpressed
The motion of a hidden fire
That trembles in the breast.”
A blind, starved, drugged man. A withered-arm man. A man with chronic pain, clumsy hands, and a debilitating limp. These are the men who will save the world. Precisely because they know they can do nothing, they rely in each heartbeat on Christ to do all. And so He does. Often, he acts most powerfully through these broken vessels picked off the trash heaps of religious institutions where they had been discarded as useless. Through the blind, the starved, the drugged, the crippled, the suffering, the clumsy, the bedridden.
No matter what the outlook is, rumors or war or peace, God will act as long as a cripple prays with the beating of his heart.
Are Darker Times Coming?
Recently, I was confronted with two contradicting predictions of the future: Pagan America: The Decline of Christianity And The Dark Age to Come and The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God: Why New Atheism Grew Old and Secular Thinkers Are Considering Christianity Again. John Daniel Davidson, author of the former, predicts, “America as we know it will come to an end. Instead of a republic of free citizens, we will be slaves in a pagan empire.” Justin Brierley, in stark contrast, hypothesizes that we are witnessing the beginning of a growing wave of faith in the West.
Darkness or light? Death or life? Which prediction, if either, is true?
Upon listening to an interview with Davidson, I was struck by a pervasive siege mentality in his words. He listed out all the travesties of modern American society and concluded that they were only going to get worse. He recommended taking “The Benedict Option,” moving en masse to various cities and taking over democratically in order to form culturally Christian outposts against the onslaught of barbaric paganism. The instinct felt natural. But it felt wrong.
When Jesus came, did he isolate himself among the righteous of the synagogues? No! He ate with sinners and tax collectors. And he called his disciples to do the same, to go out into the world and “make disciples of all nations.” He gave us the power of the Holy Spirit and the promise of eternal life. He gave us an everlasting and unbreakable hope. He told us to lose our lives, not to save them. And in every place I’ve lived, even crazy, progressive Ithaca, God has placed me in a body of believers that still continues to shine His light, however imperfectly, through the darkness.
I didn’t want to read Davidson’s book. After listening to that interview, I knew it was written in a way that would only foment anger, disgust, self-righteousness, and fear in my heart. Brierley’s book, on the other hand, shone a light on the power of the Gospel to transform even the most ungodly lives. He told story after story of committed atheist turning to Christ for meaning and put forth a compelling vision of this present darkness not as “barbarians at the gates” but as a host of hungry souls, starved for meaning, their hearts ready to be filled with Christian life.
I had a vision, as I read his book, of God’s kingdom in a herd of wild horses.
“And the tide is rolling in with vengeance and dust cloud of pounding hooves. The horse’s manes are flecked with foam. They pant they pant for the water that they are and their thirst drives them like worse fears into deserts. For all must be water for their thirst to be quenched. For Him to fully live, all must be alive.”
There is a self-abandonment in love and a simultaneous self-centeredness. We give away our lives, the strength of our arms and legs, in order to dive into God’s presence. But when we are in His presence, we swim in His love, wanting never to leave. The Christian is filled with water, pours out water to others, and yet thirsts, ever passionate for more. Our best gift to God is ourselves, and His best gift to us is Himself, and our best gift to the world is to be unified in Him.
This makes questions of the future irrelevant. We do not need to stockpile cans, or flee to rural America to build Christian forts. Whether we are faced with persecution or plenty, our mission is the same: to rely upon God in each and every heartbeat, for it is He who acts.
Richard Wurmbrand, the aforementioned Romanian pastor and prisoner, writes from his experience of persecution:
“Where do you flee when facing darkness and shadows in life? Find a favorite photo of a mountain or hill. It could be a photograph from a vacation, nearby sites, or even a postcard, magazine cut-out or greeting card. Put it in a place where you will see it whenever you face difficulties. Then envision Jesus carrying you up the mountain of myrrh where He will bring you refreshment and healing so that you can return to bring His fragrance to others.”
Richard Wurmbrand, The Midnight Bride
Confronted by the suffering of the world, be it directly or indirectly, we are all cripples, unable to walk by ourselves. Christ must carry us up the mountain of myrrh. May we all be crippled, so that our hearts are freed to cry out incessantly to God, night and day, waiting for His power. As our heartbeats slow to match His, they will cease their fluttering, the frenetic pounding that comes with running with the world. In the shadow of His wings, we will rest. In the shadow of His wings, our hearts will beat as one. In the shadow of his wings, we will sing for joy.
It does not matter what the future brings. It does not matter whether we are strong or weak. It does not matter what you can or can’t do. The heartbeats of a cripple will save the world.
A list of the hope-giving readings mentioned in this essay:
The Way of a Pilgrim (Anonymous)
The Practice of the Presence of God (Brother Lawrence)
The Midnight Bride (Wurmbrand)
Preparing for The Underground Church (Wurmbrand)
This is such an enlightening, hopeful essay. I feel so much hope and light having read it. Thank you, Amelia. I've been listening to a lot of different talking heads and noticing a pattern of people returning to God as of late. I think it's a good thing.