If you have a Facebook account, you can now also access The Works of God on a Facebook fan page by clicking here or by searching for The Works of God fan page.

Nothing fancy or extra (at least not yet), just the content from this blog.

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The United Nations has thus declared it so.  You can read about it here.

The UN is good at creating statements and ‘conventions’ and special days.  But it generally doesn’t add up to much, as noted in August when the United States signed on to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

I missed National Disability Employment Awareness Month (again).  That was in October.

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Somehow I missed this article from a couple of weeks ago that Google will be captioning YouTube videos, starting with a few specific sites and then adding more sites over time.

I don’t have any idea how many deaf people read English, but this seems like a good thing.  And videos that are captioned into English can also be translated into other languages.

I need to find out what this means for Desiring God!

A deaf engineer at Google helped create this technology.

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Motherlode, a blog on parenting in the New York Times Magazine, reported on a study from The Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders that studied mothers of children with autism spectrum disorder.

Some of the findings:

• The levels of chronic stress experienced by the mothers were similar to those of combat soldiers. The greater the child’s behavior problems, the worse the mothers’ stress.
• Mothers of those with autism reportedly spend at least two hours more each day caring for those children than a comparative group of mothers whose children were not autistic.
• The autism mothers were three times as likely to report a stressful event on any given day, and twice as likely to be tired.

My response: they needed a study to learn this?

I must admit that the comparison to soldiers in combat was a nice touch.

Many commenters at disabilityScoop have already noted that, once again, fathers were not part of a study.  So I’ll leave that one alone.

And, regardless of stress levels, parents being included or not, amount of time involved or anything else associated with disability, we know God’s response:

And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus. Philippians 4:19

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Because some children will meet Jesus before they become adults.

My daughter met the young girl in this video last year. That girl knew and loved Jesus.

She died two weeks ago.

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That headline is inflammatory (and a direct quote from the press release I was reading) because the survey question pointed to very severe disabilities rather than all disabilities:

Which would you choose: Living with a severe disability that forever alters your ability to live an independent life, or death?

An interesting question, but it is clearly guiding people toward an answer.  Theoretically, death doesn’t sound so bad when compared to being severely disabled ‘forever’!

So, a few thoughts:

1. Most people who experience disability will not ‘forever’ lose their ability to lead an ‘independent’ life, whatever that means.  We tend to take notice when that happens, of course, like in the cases of Joni Eareckson Tada or Christopher Reed.  Many, many more people will experience short-term disability: broken limbs, sicknesses that keep them from work for weeks or months, etc.
2. My son and a few other children and adults at Bethlehem have severe disabilities that permanently limit their ability for what Americans generally understand as an ‘independent’ life.  But as I’ve written before, my boy probably “suffers” less than any person I know – so who has the better ‘quality of life,’ independent or not?
3. Non-disabled Americans have no idea what life is really like for Americans with disabilities.  Certainly there are hardships which any person living with a disability or a disabled family member can document.  But that isn’t the whole story. Disability should not be the definition for whether that person has a meaningful life.
4. Abortion statistics that exceed 70-90% for various kinds of disabling conditions aren’t a surprise when half of Americans don’t even want to consider disability for themselves, even in a theoretical sense. Killing elderly people or people with severe disabilities (meaning, the strong deciding what is best for the weak solely from the perspective of the strong) is already showing up around the world, and this statistic demonstrates why it is showing up in America.
5. We are so arrogant, prideful, short-sighted and man-centered that we cannot even conceive of anything OTHER than an independent life as having worth.

Yet we know we are slaves to sin and only free if we cast every hope we have on a righteous, just, serving, holy, resurrected King:

Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? Romans 6:16

That figure quoted above came from a research survey commissioned by Disaboom.com and conducted by Kelton Research in 2008.  You can read the press release here.

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Until 8am tomorrow morning, every donation to any Minnesota non-profit is eligible for a matching gift from GiveMN.org, including Desiring God and Bethlehem Baptist Church.  You can read about it here.

A few minutes ago I saw this ‘leader board’ based on the number of people who have chosen to donate to various non-profits.  Currently Desiring God is number 4, which is very encouraging.

I offer it not to guilt anyone about giving – I firmly believe the first thing people should do when it comes to money and contributions is pray and seek God’s leading.

But I find it interesting to see what people value.  And there’s one organization in particular I wouldn’t mind seeing disappear, not just from this board but from the face of the planet.  Someday. . . .

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The little boy I wrote about two weeks ago with congenital myasthenic syndrome has died.  After hearing every medical professional talk about the pain and suffering his son was going through, his father decided not to contest his ex-wife’s and the hospital’s petition to remove life-saving technology.  The ventilator was removed last Friday, and Baby RB died shortly thereafter.

Thus, the judge in this case was not forced to make the first-ever decision to remove life-supporting technology from a baby with no brain damage when a parent wants to continue such treatment.  He seemed relieved in his public statements.

This particular case is very sad, but it sets no precedents other than being highly publicized.  But such publicity might be dangerous to other babies identified with that condition. (more…)

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I spoke with Brenda Fischer, Disability Ministry Coordinator, and God has been blessing Bethlehem with more families that include at least one child with a disability, and sometimes more than one child.  We are also seeing more children with complicated behaviors related to their disabilities.

We cannot serve everyone currently and need more volunteers at all three sites.  Please pray, as Jesus commanded:

And Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” Matthew 9:35-38

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