When Joni Eareckson Tada speaks of Rika, she highlights her friend’s “deep, time-tested faith in God” and the endurance she’s developed while living with a debilitating chronic condition. For more than fifteen years, Rika has been bedbound, unable even to see the moon from her room’s tiny window. But she hasn’t lost hope; she trusts in God, reads and studies the Bible, and as Joni describes it, she “knows how to stand firm during fierce battles against discouragement.”

Joni likens Rika’s tenacity and persistence to that of Eleazar, a soldier at the time of King David who refused to flee the Philistines. Instead of joining the troops who took off, “Eleazar stood his ground . . . till his hand grew tired and froze to the sword” (2 Samuel 23:10). Through God’s power, “The Lord brought about a great victory that day” (v. 10). As Joni observes, even as Eleazar hung on to the sword with determination, so too does Rika cling to “the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God” (Ephesians 6:17). And there, in God, she finds her strength.

Whether in glowing good health or battling discouragement over a chronic condition, we too can look to God to deepen our stores of hope and to help us to endure. In Christ we find our strength.