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Archive for January, 2010

Rise Up O Men of God: Guest Post at Hope for Special Moms

Posted in commentary on January 7, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

I’ve written before of my esteem for our good friends at Grace Church in Eden Prairie and their God-centered Barnabas Disability Ministry.  God has provided great encouragements to many at Bethlehem through these friends!

Sue Hume, one of those friends and the writer for Hope for Special Moms, asked me to contribute to her blog.  So I did.

You can read it here: Rise Up O Men of God!

I shook Troy Dobbs’ hand once (their senior pastor), but have never heard him preach.  My embrace of that church comes entirely based on fruits of God’s work I see in the lives of the people impacted by their disability ministry!  I hope Pastor Dobbs takes encouragement that his people are the real deal on this issue of disability and the sovereignty of God.  Paul, writing to Philemon, speaks of the kind of encouragement I feel from those folks at Grace:

I thank my God always when I remember you in my prayers, because I hear of your love and of the faith that you have toward the Lord Jesus and for all the saints, and I pray that the sharing of your faith may become effective for the full knowledge of every good thing that is in us for the sake of Christ. For I have derived much joy and comfort from your love, my brother, because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you. Philemon 1:4-7

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God is answering our prayers, and our need is growing!

Posted in Prayer Requests on January 6, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

During this prayer week to begin 2010 at Bethlehem, Brenda Fischer identified two things among the many for prayer:

  • That the Lord would provide one-on-one aides for Sunday morning at the South Site and North Campus (and Downtown as well – my addition!).
  • That the Lord would provide direction in ministering to adults and older teens with cognitive disabilities.

Joyously, more families experiencing disability are finding Bethlehem and considering it as their church home.  But this also means our need for more volunteers, and thus our dependence on God to provide, continues to grow.

Thank you for praying with and for us.

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Pray for young moms and dads

Posted in commentary, Scripture on January 5, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

We had the privilege of watching some children over the weekend as their youngest sibling, just 13 months old, needed to go to the hospital very suddenly.  He’s a complicated boy because of his disabilities.

Those early days and months and years of disability are intense, frightening and disorienting for young moms and dads.

Young moms and dads need our prayers.  If you know some today, pray for them by name.  If you don’t know any right now, pray for the ones he’s preparing to bring to you.  Experience tells me that eventually God will bring somebody experiencing disability for the first time into your life, no matter who or where you are.

And treasure Jesus above everything, because that is what they will need from you:

For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.  May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.  Romans 15:4-7

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“I just want my child to be happy. . .”

Posted in commentary on January 4, 2010 | 9 Comments »

Isn’t that what every parent wants?  Of course there’s a great difference  between our culture’s understanding of happiness and Christian hedonism!

I know the following statement has lots of exceptions; I try to stay away from sweeping, romantic statements about disability and happiness.  But the contrast offered by Dr. C. Everett Koop was just too good to pass up because of how our culture views disability, normalcy and the opportunity to experience happiness:

Yet it has been my constant experience that disability and unhappiness do not go hand in hand. The most unhappy children I have known have been completely normal. On the other hand, there is remarkable joy and happiness in the lives of most handicapped children; yet some have borne burdens which I would have found difficult to face indeed.

C. Everett Koop, M.D., Sc.D.
former Surgeon General, U.S. Public Health Service

Twenty-fifth Anniversary Foundation Day Lecture
Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children, Dublin, Ireland

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Jesus’ miracles are even more amazing than we realize

Posted in commentary, News on January 2, 2010 | 5 Comments »

Embedded in an article in the New York Times Magazine on blind people, braille, technology and literacy were these statements about how our brains function:

In the 1990s, a series of brain-imaging studies revealed that the visual cortices of the blind are not rendered useless, (emphasis mine) as previously assumed. When test subjects swept their fingers over a line of Braille, they showed intense activation in the parts of the brain that typically process visual input.

The architecture of the brain is not fixed, and without images to process, the visual cortex can reorganize for new functions (emphasis mine). A 2003 study in Nature Neuroscience found that blind subjects consistently surpassed sighted ones on tests of verbal memory, and their superior performance was caused, the authors suggested, by the extra processing that took place in the visual regions of their brains.

This concurs with other studies I have read that portions of the brain dedicated to processing information taken in by our sense of sight are, for people who are born blind, programmed to do other things.

In other words, what Jesus did for the man born blind in John 9 was far more significant than just making his eyes work.

This man’s brain, over decades, would have no ability to process visual images.  That portion of his brain would have been reorganized to do something else.

So when Jesus gave him sight, he re-wired his brain.  Jesus is amazing!

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Jesus is intentional about disability

Posted in Scripture on January 1, 2010 | 1 Comment »

Jesus reigns over all things:

All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. John 1:3

That includes creating some who are blind:

And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”  Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.” John 9:2-3

And then relieving some of their disability:

And (Jesus) said to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). So he went and washed and came back seeing. John 9:7

But he did not heal the man’s blindness just so he could physically see.  Jesus provided something much better:

(The formerly blind man) said, “Lord, I believe,” and he worshiped him. John 9:38

What are decades of blindness compared to an eternity filled with joy in the presence of Jesus?

For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. 2 Corinthians 4:17-18

Happy New Year!  Jesus is King over everything!

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