The Works of God

Bible stories have consequences on children who grow up to be adults who have children with disabilities.

I’m old enough to remember when little cut-out figures made of flannel were used to tell bible stories in Sunday School.  The problem isn’t the flannelgraph.

The problem is that they made God look pathetically small.

Here’s what I mean:

I heard the story of Naaman from 2 Kings 5 as a kid.  In the flannelgraph version, Naaman emerges as this poor guy with spots on his arms and legs.  The teacher would explain that Naaman had these spots because he had a terrible disease.  Somehow or another this poor guy would end up standing before a figure of an old guy with a grey beard who would tell him to go wash in the river.  The little flannelgraph Naaman would get dunked under a blue piece of flannelgraph and lo and behold, the spots, also of flannelgraph, would fall off and he would be clean, or healed, depending on who was telling the story.

The point: wasn’t God good to do that to poor old pathetic Naaman who had that rotten disease?

Fast forward a couple of decades and memories of that story are not helpful when my child is hooked up to tubes and monitors.  And when the tubes and monitors go away, I’m taking a baby with a life-long disability home.  That isn’t going away.  It didn’t appear that I had a nice god to help me, like Naaman got helped.

The real story of Naaman is very relevant to parents of children with disabilities, unlike the version described above.  Ultimately, it is a story about God – a powerful, just, holy, righteous, purposeful, sovereign God who can be trusted in all circumstance with all things.

The kind of God who is a real comfort when your kid is different than other kids, because of disability.

While I’m on vacation the next several days, I’ve written a series of posts on 2 Kings 5 using the text itself and my thoughts on its relevance to our situations.  I look forward to your reaction, and hopefully your being encouraged to trust this God who is not ‘nice,’ but certainly sovereign – over everything.