Overcoming Limitations

The tennis ball lobbed back and forth, baseline to baseline of the court. I stopped and watched, amazed. Normally, tennis on our nearby courts doesn't transfix me, but this little game did. Both contestants were in wheelchairs. How on earth are they getting the power to smack the ball so hard when they are unable to use any power but the strength of their arm? I put my whole body momentum and force behind my shots! And how are they able to zip around the court quickly enough to reach the shot in the first place?

One man saw me watching as he paused to retrieve a ball. I waved. He waved back and returned to his game. I walked on, inspired. Never succumb to limitations. So many can be overcome.

That afternoon my trebuchet team gathered at Josh's house again. They spent four hours brainstorming and tinkering.
"When we go to Nationals," began Josh.
"Nationals?" I said, "We have to win at States to do that."
"I know," he said, "I intend to. Well at least to medal."
Now I know that means their trebuchet has to fire projectiles three times, if not four times, further than it currently is.... but I had the vision of tennis players in wheelchairs that stilled my pessimism.

They came up with ingenious ideas which I cannot divulge in case the spies for teams throughout the world are hitting the blogosphere. They spent four hours. Darkness descended, and we were still firing the trebuchet into the night while the little sisters begged us to go home so they could go to bed. I don't know if all the effort made significant changes or not. But I do know that something special had happened to my team that had just missed medaling in this event at the regional competition. They realized how close they were to victory. And they were perhaps even seized by the scientific fever, the desire to understand, to explore, to figure out, to find the elegant solution that had eluded them....well ok. Maybe not. Maybe it was just the allure of round shiny medals on satin hung around their necks. But someday, they would look back on it all and realize they had learned something too, and that was the more valued prize of the whole shebang.

Asherel and I are studying the book of Philippians, and she asked me about a portion of a verse that puzzled her.
"What does it mean in Phillipians 2:10, that every knee shall bow to Christ, even those under the earth?"

I love Asherel's questions. They are often about phrases I have glossed over in my own reading.
"Well, if you look at the whole verse, it says at the name of Jesus, all will ultimately worship him, whether in heaven, on earth, or under earth. I presume it means hell. Ultimately, even those who rejected Him and turned their backs on Him will see that He is indeed who He claimed to be. They make a conscious decision to reject Him, but even in the torment of Hell, the further torment of seeing the truth of the One they did not want to believe in will perhaps be the worst torment of all. But no one ends up there that doesn't want to be there. God desires that everyone would come to Him.  So if we believe that, what is the message for us today, in how we live?"
"We should tell others," she said.
"And even further, what should we do to be able to tell others well?"
"We need to be gracious," she said, "And prepared."
"And that is what this whole life of education is about," I told her, "You never ever know when something you have learned will be useful. So learn all you can, absorb all you can, while you are young and your brain that is so strong and gifted can do so. You never know when some fact, some experience, something you learned may make a difference."

Maybe my team is just finding out about how to pound out every imperfection of a flinging machine. But maybe, just maybe, they are also finding out how to squeeze every bit of knowledge out of an experience that someday they may be quite unexpectedly called upon to use.  You just never know where life will take you and what strengths or wisdom or character you will have to have developed to follow the path you will need to follow. You never know when some idea, or fact, or experience, may tip the scale and usher someone from a descent into Hell the other way.  I closed my eyes and saw tennis players in wheelchairs, laughing in the sunlit court.

Philippians 2: 9-13
 ⁹ Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
   and gave him the name that is above every name,
¹⁰ that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
   in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
¹¹ and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
   to the glory of God the Father.

 ¹² Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, ¹³ for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.