I’m glad to introduce you to another dad from Bethlehem today, Chris Nelson. If you are fortunate to have a copy of Just the Way I Am, you can see Chris with his oldest boy on page 45.
I could say a lot about this man who I deeply respect, but I’ll just share this one fact about his family. He and Katie adopted Andrew and then learned about his significant disabilities. That was a hard blow. A few years later, with the full knowledge about what could happen, they adopted AGAIN, trusting God to provide all they would need. Today they also have a third son God gave them through their own pregnancy.
In other words, God has called him and sustains him through hard things. Thank you, Chris, for writing today.
The Pursuit of Happiness
The depth of human depravity is readily apparent when we are “me” centered rather than God-centered. When the pursuit of personal happiness trumps the pursuit of holiness. When we are so busy pursuing our sin-saturated mud puddles that we neglect to even consider what it might mean to embrace God’s offer of an eternal holiday at the sea.
On June 8 it was reported in a story on startribune.com that a Colorado woman was accused of killing her 6 month old baby. Her motive? “She believed the boy was autistic and thought his condition would ruin her life.”
She killed her own baby, knitted together in her womb by her Sovereign and Loving Creator, because she thought he might cramp her style. She reportedly considered taking her own life instead, but didn’t want to unduly burden her husband with the child. That’s chilling. That’s real. That’s the overflow of the human heart un-broken and un-repentant over sin, and un-surrendered to the restraining and sustaining and transforming mercy and grace of God as revealed in Christ Jesus.
As I reflected on this story, and my own struggle to mortify my sin as it is daily revealed to me through the gift of a mentally disabled son, Pastor John’s word from his sermon Sustained by Sovereign Grace-Forever, came to mind:
Not grace to bar what is not bliss,
Nor flight from all distress, but this:
The grace that orders our trouble and pain,
And then, in the darkness, is there to sustain.
True and abiding joy isn’t in being burden-less. It is in being upheld and transformed through the burden by the grace of God. It is, when facing often weighty temptations to wallow in despair and anger and self pity, to repent afresh of our sin and gaze up from the foot of the cross to marvel at the one who paid our debt, and to freshly turn our focus to the risen Lord and His purposes, rather than our pathetic pursuits of momentary and fleeting escape from hard things.
The Works of God 
“We try things, and we do it badly!”
Posted in commentary on June 23, 2010| 1 Comment »
Lord willing, as I write this Dianne is about to go to a committee meeting at my dad’s church on their disability ministry. She and our children are visiting my parents the next couple of days.
Dad’s church is in that awful early place of most discussions like this: where do we start? There is need, there is desire, and there is so much that could be done. There are more ideas than resources. The desire to do it ‘right’ from the beginning is very strong, and can actually slow things down or derail an effort entirely.
As Dianne and I talked about it this morning, we both landed on how important it is to look at who is right in front of you, then pick one and do something. Doing something for one family starts a church down the road of serving the next family. Pretty soon, the church is serving several families.
And that isn’t easy. In fact, I made the comment this morning, “we try things, and we frequently do it badly!” Children don’t have good experiences. Parents become discouraged. Volunteers are disappointed. Brenda, our disability ministry coordinator, is overwhelmed by the complexity of requests and the depth of the pain in families.
It often feels like a mess.
Yet – praise be to God! – we learn things and God helps us. Over time, volunteers understand how to serve in ways that make sense. Bonds frequently develop between a volunteer and a child. Parents gain confidence that their child with disabilities is not just being served, but is loved and respected as the unique individual God made him or her.
That’s pretty sweet!
And then another family comes, or a volunteer needs to step down, or a new situation shows up in a family, and the process of praying, learning, failing, and, Lord willing, finding that sweet engagement starts all over again.
We constantly need God’s help! I am grateful he is a big God who loves to be needed and leaned on as the sovereign, omnipotent, omnipresent, loving, good provider he is.
I didn’t always understand that. There are some old emails I sent to Pastor David Michael that make me cringe inside over the slights I felt we were experiencing at church. I am very grateful he, and others, looked to Jesus rather than in my negative responses as they sought to serve the Knight family. There really wasn’t much positive relational payoff in serving us those early days! Over the years God has frequently used Bethlehem to change my heart, encourage me in dark days, and help me to see the preciousness of his word.
It wasn’t a perfect disability ministry program that drew us and kept us at Bethlehem. It was the people, always the people. People who trusted Jesus above everything. People who knew that Jesus would supply every need of theirs and of ours. People who were quick to forgive.
And that’s why I have hope that a church in Winona, Minnesota will get started in serving some of their own families experiencing disability. Because my dad loves Jesus, he wants others to love Jesus, too, and he particularly has a heart for other moms and dads and grandparents with children with disabilities.
And that’s better than the perfectly designed program any day.
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