This topsy-turvy world challenges your calm every day.
Yet, one unfailing step reclaims serenity.
Topsy-turvy land
We’ve all heard the term “topsy-turvy.” The term comes from an old English story in which the writer describes life in “Topsy-Turvy Land.”
For example, a resident in Topsy-Turvy Land discovers he has to dig in the ground to find apples in his orchard. The apple trees grow into the earth instead of above it.
Startled, he returns to the house to make hot tea. When he pours the water out of the kettle, it’s frozen.
Everything is unpredictable.
- One day, fire would boil water; the next day, it would freeze it.
- One day, the sun would come up in the east; another day, it would come up in the west.
- Another day, it would come up in the north, and then in the south.
- Some days, it wouldn’t come up at all.
Even gravity is unpredictable in Topsy-Turvy Land.
- Sometimes it holds things down.
- On other days, gravity pulls things up.
- On different days, it pulls things sideways.
Well, the man living in Topsy-Turvy Land went crazy.
Severely disabled
I’m preparing to speak to hundreds of special-needs and foster children at a Christian water sports camp called Skiin’ With The Galilean (SWTG).
Their world is topsy-turvy.
Their life is upside down, and they live in deep distress.
No relief is in sight, and they are hanging on by a thread for any sign of hope.
What should I tell them?
Folks in trauma feel like they have an incurable wound.
They feel like things are too broken to be healed.
Faith restores calm
It reminds me of a time in Israel’s history when it was in exile in Babylon.
Suffering was so massive that even God said…
“Your wound is incurable, your injury beyond healing.” Jeremiah 30:12
Yet, a few verses later, he adds…
“But I will restore you to health and heal your wounds.” Jeremiah 30:17
Which is it? Incurable? Curable?
Healing can be a reversal of symptoms, or, as writer Philp Yancey defines it, “Health is the ability to adapt to life as it happens.”
Which is it? Both? One or the other? Either way, one powerful decision of faith can move us forward.
“Most of us believe in a Creator. Do we think the Creator stopped making things new after the big bang? What if the Creator has the freedom to continue to create new things? What if the Creator is free to create new green shoots in your life that are underived from your present circumstances?” Make Sense of Your Story, Adam Young, p. 237-238
Two strokes. Two outcomes.
Yale scholar Eric Metaxas, author of Miracles, was in the front row and witnessed Paul Teske suffering a cerebral hemorrhage while Paul was speaking at Saint Paul’s Episcopal Church on May 7, 2004.
Within minutes, Paul was on the floor and rushed to the hospital, where he was treated for thirteen days.
He was released from the hospital to a life of disability in a wheelchair.
But Paul Teske, a former U.S. Navy chaplain and a no-nonsense ordained Lutheran minister, felt a nudge to attend a healing service on May 28, 2004, only seven days after leaving the hospital.
Unbelievably, he shook involuntarily in that service at his seat, not on the stage, “in a way I cannot duplicate to this day, like a jackhammer used to break up concrete.” For the first time since his stroke three weeks prior, Paul’s left leg returned to strength without the need for a wheelchair, walker, or brace. See his book Healing for Today, Bridge Logos, 2010.
Katherine Wolf, on the other hand, had a similar stroke in 2008. She has not experienced physical healing. However, her book Treasures in the Dark and podcast Hope Heals show that healing can take a different form.
Her healing has been a powerful adaptation. Her hope is a surviving force of faith in the living God.
Healing. Which is it? Reversal of circumstances? Powerful adaptation?
Both are possible at any moment with God.
Hope in a topsy-turvy world
Why is calm reasonable in topsy-turvy events?
Because there is a Maker who has the power to make things new.
He hasn’t stopped. Have you?
What would happen if you believed God could make something new out of nothing?