The Works of God

Church was really sweet yesterday.  Heart and head were well served even before Pastor John preached in John 14!

Joel Houston’s Take Heart was a particular help:

All our burdens
And all our shame
God our freedom
He has overcome

All our troubles
And all our tears
God our hope
He has overcome

All our failures
And all our fear
God our love
He has overcome

I pray it blesses you as well.

In this video Joel Houston talks about writing the song:

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Isaiah 50 is a prophecy about Jesus.  If you read the whole chapter that will be pretty obvious.  When I read it recently, verses 7-9 particularly stood out because of their similarity to some other verses (especially when you read it in the NIV).

Isaiah 50:7-9:

Because the Sovereign Lord helps me,
I will not be disgraced.
Therefore have I set my face like flint,
and I know I will not be put to shame.
He who vindicates me is near. 
Who then will bring charges against me?
Let us face each other!
Who is my accuser?
Let him confront me!
It is the Sovereign Lord who helps me.
Who will condemn me?
They will all wear out like a garment;
the moths will eat them up.

Sound familiar?  Read Romans 8:31-34:

What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died —more than that, who was raised to life —is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.

Here’s the thing that almost took my breath away.  Isaiah 50 is talking about Jesus.  He deserves help from the Sovereign LORD.  He deserves the nearness and vindication of God.  He deserves no condemnation.  I deserve just the opposite: disgrace, rejection, condemnation, accusation.

But Romans 8 is talking about me.  And God promises me exactly the same things he promises His beloved, perfectly righteous Son…as long as I am in Christ.  Is that amazing grace or what?

So what does that have to do with disability?  Well…nothing directly.  It applies to every sinner who puts their faith in Jesus.  And all by itself, that should be more than enough.  But keep reading in Romans 8 and you see the link to disability, among many other things. These verses continue the flow of verses 31-34 (comments in italics are mine):

What shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword (or disability)? As it is written:

“For your sake we face death all day long;
we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation (including disability), will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

If we are in Christ, then God is for us.  And if God is for us then nothing – in particular, not disability – can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amazing!

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Because even people in the church can get disability very, very wrong.

From the Anglican Church of Canada, Task Force on Human Life, Interim Report, 1977:

Our sense and emotion lead us to the grave mistake of treating human looking shapes as if they were human, although they lack the least vestige of human behavior and intellect. In fact, the only way to treat such defective infants humanely is not to treat them as human.

As quoted by Dr. C. Everett Koop in his chapter, Ethical and Surgical Considerations in the Care of the Newborn with Congenital Abnormalities, in Infanticide and the Handicapped Newborn, p. 100.

(Update: Please note that Dr. Koop does NOT endorse this statement and stands strongly for children with disabilities.)

To their credit, the General Assembly of the Anglican Church of Canada did not approve the report.

But the fact that anyone would speak of another human being this way is not acceptable.  For an official group representing a church body to say such things is astonishing.

We will not repeat their mistake of 35 years ago. And we will not be led by ‘sense and emotion,’ but by the very word of God.

God creates human beings for his glory.  Let those who would speak of them as defective and act as if they do not matter be mindful that God himself has regard for their well-being:

You shall not curse the deaf or put a stumbling block before the blind, but you shall fear your God: I am the LORD.
(Leviticus 19:14 ESV)

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The Reimer family is incredible in the best sense of the word.  God gripped them and guided them into full-time ministry to families like ours.  This 3 1/2 minute video will introduce you to them and their work.

I’m hoping Tamara Reimer will get some camera time in future videos!

Thank you to Pastor Paul Martin for tweeting this video.

As I write this it is 92 degrees in Minnesota; the snow in this video looks pretty good to me!

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It has been an encouraging week with videos about marriage, a father’s joy, and a mother’s resolve all being posted in the past few days.

And then I had this stark reminder: there is a war in our culture against people with disabilities.

For some reason, my news reader on Wednesday brought up an article that is almost a year old.  The title reveals exactly what it is about: I saw my son’s bleak future and knew I had to abort him.  Note: this article is very descriptive about what happened to her, including the abortion process. Please use care.

I don’t fault the mother.  She had, it appears, literally no support to spare the life of her son.  Her sister, who is a nurse, advised her to abort. Her brother, who parents a child with CP, said it could be unbearable for everyone if he lived.  The health care professionals focused on what was ‘wrong’ with this boy.  She was entirely alone with her fears and prejudices and assumptions.

We must tell our stories, pointing people to God as the source of hope.  Of course it is hard, and God is good.  The pressures and heartache are incredible, and God will supply everything we need.

We simply must let the world know these children are infinitely valuable, all of them.  We must tell people that the little ones were created to live for eternity, even if some of them will live hard lives here.

We must.

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There are scores of women who have children of all ages who cannot speak an intelligible word because of their cognitive disabilities.  Or their children, like my son, have some language, but those children can never make a spontaneous call of deep affections for their mother.

There will be no handwritten cards, telephone calls or gifts from those children to their mothers today.

Yet, most of those children have mothers who pour their lives into them, sometimes for decades beyond what they anticipated when that little life first starting growing in their bodies.

For all of you moms in that circumstance, know that this proverb is still for you, just not yet!

Her children rise up and call her blessed.  Proverbs 31:28

Why do I believe this?

1 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. 2 And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. 4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

5 And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” 6 And he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment. 7 The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be my son.  Revelation 21:1-7

Those mothers who cling to Jesus for daily strength and as their future hope have a glorious eternity waiting for them.

Someday, I believe my son will tell me things almost too wonderful for me to comprehend about what he experienced in this present age.  And I expect one of the things he will talk about is his tender, eternal regard for the woman who cared for him without a thought about what she would receive from him in return.  On that day, he will rise and call his mother blessed!

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