Inspiration

Today I learned the story of a most incredible individual. His name is Nick Vujicic and he was born, inexplicably, with no arms or legs. I was so fascinated with his story, and I had time to kill, so I started reading his site and watching his videos. I was soon hooked; not by Nick, but by the Spirit, which I felt as I listened to Nick speak.

What is incredible, to me, about Nick is not simply what he is able to accomplish though seriously handicapped. What I find incredible is that he understands his purpose in this life—something that most whole people are unable to do. He understands the value of a soul and that it is not diminished by being outwardly broken. In fact, in Nick’s case, it appears that the outward deficiencies we’re designed to allow God to manifest the inward miracles he has performed on this man’s soul. Nick see’s the bigger picture. He sees that his “handicap” is God’s means for lifting and inspiring thousands of others, and he rejoices in it. A student at a Chinese university that Nick addressed asked him how, despite the way God had created him, he could continue to have faith in Him. Nick responds by telling him that he knows God will one day restore his body and that if God could use his condition to lift countless others, then it is worth it. When the young man asked how Nick could believe in a God that wouldn’t give him a miracle, I felt deeply in my heart that God has produced a most incredible miracle in Nick. I feel that my life would be better spent focusing more on seeing the miracles that God has already wrought than seeking short-sightedly after the ones I believe he ought to perform. Nick understands God’s mercy and love and because of that, he sees the miracle that his condition is.

Nick asks a crowd in India what good it is to be whole on the outside when one is broken on the inside. I have thought a lot about this lately. Nick acknowledges that pain and loneliness are real and they are big; but, he says, they are not bigger than God. I would say the same is true of sin. I think that if we understood the potential of one soul, we would see God’s perfection of it as nothing less than the greatest miracle comprehensible. Not because of the difficulty of the task (though it required and infinite atonement), but because of the gloriousness of the outcome. Perhaps I now understand, in small part, why God was willing to sacrifice his Only Begotten Son.

“Now ye may suppose that this is ^afoolishness in me; but behold I say unto you, that by ^bsmall and simple things are great things brought to pass; and small means in many instances doth confound the wise” (Alma 37:6)

“ But the ^anatural man ^breceiveth not the things of the ^cSpirit of God: for they are ^dfoolishness unto him: neither can he ^eknow them, because they are ^fspiritually ^gdiscerned.”(1 Cor. 2:14)