January 4 2012 - City on our Knees

Let me start by asking you a question...

If you have a job that you really like and you were injured in a manner that would prevent you from doing that job, what would you do?

During my 10 years in the fire service I never really thought about the chance for extreme injury. I knew that it could happen, because it did to several friends of mine over the years, but never really to me. So what would I do, as it seems in many of my other posts so far, I don't know. I think this blog is taking on a persona of its own, and it is based on facts of things I do not know. I will tell you this, I would have had an issue not being able to go to work everyday and from there I don't know. I can't sit for too long, so at some point I would have had to get up and do something for myself, but what would that something be.

Now, consider this!!! You are a teenage sensation that has the whole world at his/her hands. You are the best in what you do (athletics for this topic) and while you enjoy tremendous success in your sport, you have issues with friends at school treating you bad because they are jealous of you. Would you overcome a career ending injury by putting together a massive children's organization designed to provide children with terminal diseases a place to go and get away from "being sick". Would you donate most of your winnings to this cause, give up all materialistic behaviors and be ordained a nun.

Today's reading in TobyMAC's book City on our Knees reports the life of teenage tennis sensation Andrea Jaeger. After incurring a shoulder injury that ended up pushing her out of the sport she had been so successful at, she starting the Silver Lining Foundation and now operates a 2 million dollar per year foundation helping terminal ill children. Scripture at the end of the story is particularly interesting. Citing the Message Translation

"Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given, and then sink yourself into that. Don't be impressed with yourself. Don't compare yourself with others. Each of you must take responsibility for doing the creative best you can with your own life." (Galatians 6:4-5)