I can tell that some people feel sorry for Paul when they first meet him.
On days when it snows, however, his brothers are not among them!
I know I’ve been sharing things from J.C. Ryle a lot these days. I’ve really been encouraged! Paragraph formatting is mine:
The servants of Christ in every age should treasure up the doctrine before us, and remember it in time of need. It is “full of sweet, pleasant, and unspeakable comfort to godly people.”
Let such never forget that they live in a world where God overrules all times and events, and where nothing can happen but by God’s permission. The very hairs of their heads are all numbered.
Sorrow and sickness, and poverty, and persecution, can never touch them, unless God sees fit.
They may boldly say to every cross–“You could have no power against me, except it were given you from above.”
Then let them work on confidently. They are immortal, until their work is done.
Let them suffer patiently, if needs be that they suffer. Their “times are in God’s hand.” (Psalm. 31:15.)
That hand guides and governs all things here below, and makes no mistakes.
J.C. Ryle, The Gospel of John, Kindle Location 2473-79.
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A word to us from J.C. Ryle on John 5:1-18, the healing of the paralytic (emphases in bold are mine):
Every sickness and sorrow is the voice of God speaking to us. Each has its peculiar message. Happy are they who have an eye to see God’s hand, and an ear to hear His voice, in all that happens to them. Nothing in this world happens by chance.
And as it is with sickness, so it is with recovery. Renewed health should send us back to our post in the world with a deeper hatred of sin, a more thorough watchfulness over our own ways, and a more constant purpose of mind to live for God. Far too often the excitement and novelty of returning health tempt us to forget the vows and intentions of the sick-room. There are spiritual dangers attending a recovery! Well would it be for us all after illness to grave these words on our hearts, “Let me sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto me.”
Let us leave the passage with grateful hearts, and bless God that we have such a Gospel and such a Savior as the Bible reveals. Are we ever sick and ill? Let us remember that Christ sees, and knows, and can heal as He thinks fit. Are we ever in trouble? Let us hear in our trouble the voice of God, and learn to hate sin more.
J.C. Ryle, The Gospel of John, Kindle Loc. 1468-77.
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If you haven’t listened to David Mathis’ interview of Justin Taylor on abortion, please ignore this post, go there and be blessed. It is 16 minutes and Justin’s observations about God’s grace and God’s design are thrilling!
Ok, back to today.
Some thoughts I had:
- More than 90% of women who discover their child has Down syndrome choose to abort
- Health professionals tend to assume that when Down syndrome is discovered, the mother will choose to abort; some women report they really didn’t feel like they had a choice
- Currently, relatively few women actually have the test because of the danger to the unborn child
- New and safer diagnostic tools are coming in 2012 that will allow for more accurate determinations of genetic issues like Down syndrome earlier in a pregnancy
- There is a general movement amongst health professionals to encourage most or even all pregnant women to have these tests
- These new tests will undoubtedly reveal more unborn children with Down syndrome, particularly in younger women who currently are not advised to have any tests.
So, I have assumed that even more children with Down syndrome will be aborted when these tests appear.
But what if the opposite happened?
But what if people right now spoke the truth about God’s sovereignty over all things and the value of little ones with disabilities, about the heartache and the joy?
What if mothers of unborn babies and fathers heard that message and responded differently than expected to the news that their baby has Down syndrome?
What if doctors were confronted with lots of parents who were passionately in favor of letting the child live, ready to take on the responsibilities and heartache and joy that God has given to them?
What if that started a change of heart in more medical professionals, guiding them to see that they had not really considered the inherent value of that little growing life, and then considering how they could be more compassionate toward the mother and the child?
What if more mothers and fathers, rather than feeling pressure to abort, were encouraged to let this child live?
What if that actually increased the number of children with Down syndrome being born, which increased their visibility in the culture, which opened people’s eyes to the beauty of God’s master plan in designing some to live with disability their entire lives?
Which made all human life look like the extraordinary gift that it is.
What if God used tests designed specifically to rid the world of people with Down syndrome to break the back of the abortion industry?
Crazy, I know. Fewer babies with Down syndrome being born is obviously more realistic.
But is my thought really crazier than dead people (like us) being awakened to new life in Jesus?
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Here is a statement about abortion laws by a pastor:
I felt then and I feel now that the church has a certain obligation because those laws are on the books to do something about changing them. That’s our penance, to change those laws which are so unfair and unreal. I’ve been swimming upstream a lot of my ministerial life.
Nothing objectionable there, right?
This pastor, however, was advocating for abortion through his church, developing networks of pastors to assist women in finding abortions in the 1960s. Organizations like Planned Parenthood continue to look for clergy of all denominations to endorse abortion because they know that even today clergy have moral authority among many people.
If you read the article linked above, you might notice that there is no mention of fathers. Not one. And the only reason adoption was mentioned was if the woman ‘couldn’t do it’ (have an abortion). This evil in the name of the church is breathtaking.
I am encouraged that today when people think of church and abortion, they assume the position is against this vile practice. That’s a good thing. And polls suggest that even with abortion being legal for decades and whole movements dedicated to ‘educating’ people about the necessity of this ‘choice’, most Americans do not embrace it.
May that increasingly become the case for our unborn babies with disabilities as well. May pastors who speak strongly and without equivocation about abortion be sure to include our babies with disabilities as those who deserve to live.
And may those clergy who endorse the killing of babies continue to fade into obscurity and irrelevancy, for their own sake as well as for the sake of families:
Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness (James 3:1 ESV).
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Related to yesterday’s post on joy, Pastor John dealt with the reality of this life and the wonder of Jesus in a helpful way during his sermon on Sunday, If a Grain of Wheat Dies, It Bears Much Fruit:
(Jesus) says, I am going to glory. I am going to bear much fruit. And the way I am going is by hating my life in this world, by suffering and dying for you.
And then he says, Follow me. Die with me. Hate your life in this world with me. Serve me.
Two things become unmistakably clear. One is that this is hard. And the other is that this is glorious.
That’s a little more realistic about the opportunity for joy than buying tools or shoes!
Specifically, Pastor John speaks to how this feeds joy as he concluded the sermon:
So don’t miss the glory and the overflowing joy in this hard life of being a Christian.
- We die;
- we hate our lives in this world;
- we follow Jesus on the Calvary road;
- we become servants.
And when we do, what we find is that
- We bear much fruit;
- we keep our lives for eternal life;
- we join Jesus where he is in glory;
- the Father honors us.
The culture, and our own sinful hearts, would have us believe that a child with disabilities destroys any opportunity for joy. Ironically, to a culture that prizes ease and entertainment, experiencing disability or disease in our families prepares us for real joy guaranteed.
But only if we know Jesus.
Because of Jesus, the Christian looks directly at hard things and understands there is a greater, richer, infinitely glorious thing happening that will bring glory to the Father. But that isn’t all – it is also ultimately and eternally for our good because we get to be with Jesus.
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I ran into Sears and saw at least twenty of these signs hanging from the ceiling and on the door.
I mean, come on! Even hardened materialists understand that more ‘stuff” only buys a fleeting moment of satisfaction and just as frequently a longer season of buyer’s regret.
But then I found myself feeling sorry for the marketing department of this very large retailer. They have to find some way to make their store stand out from other stores.
So, they tap into something that people actually want, something real and lasting. From that standpoint, choosing joy wasn’t such a bad idea.
Except that you can’t really attach ‘joy’ to clothes and tools and television sets.
A year ago I posted the McDonalds ad that featured coffee as the pathway to joy. Joy is still a powerful motivator, even in a culture as materialistic and cynical as ours. And this sign was an indicator, again, that we want our joy cheap and easily accessible.
Our children with disabilities help us understand that joy frequently isn’t cheap or easily accessible. In fact, in the early years I would have said that joy was impossible in the midst of all the emotional, financial, spiritual and educational ‘stuff’ attached to disability. Yet, today, I can say that I have experienced joy in the midst of hard things.
It is one of the reasons I quote Paul so frequently: as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing everything (2 Corinthians 6:10 ESV).
And, in fact, we do have a guarantee of real joy!
In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory (Ephesians 1:11-14 ESV).
Now that is real joy, indeed!
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I’m reading a wonderful biography by Eric Metaxas of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian and pastor who stood against so much evil in Nazi Germany. God gave him the ability to see things that others simply could not, and it frequently put him in the middle of danger.
Metaxas points out that, though well educated and part of an influential, wealthy family, Bonhoeffer could see the needs of the poor, the powerless, and those with disabilities.
When he went to Bethel with his friend, Friedrich von Bodelschwingh, he was introduced to the Bethel community in Biesenthal. This community, started by Bodelschwingh’s father, served hundreds of people with disabilities. Metaxas describes it as ‘the antithesis of the Nietzchean worldview that exalted power and strength. It was the gospel made visible, a fairy-tale landscape of grace, where the weak and helpless were cared for in a palpably Christian atmosphere’ (Metaxas, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy, p. 184).
It moved Bonhoeffer to a deeper understanding of God’s purposes through and God’s care for people with disabilities (emphases in bold are mine):
Bonhoeffer attended services and wrote his grandmother about the people with epilepsy: their “condition of being actually defenseless may perhaps reveal to these people certain actualities of our human existence, in which we are in fact basically defenseless, more clearly than can ever be possible for us who are healthy.” But even in 1933, the anti-gospel of Hitler was moving toward the legal murder of these people who, like the Jews, were categorized as unfit, as a drain on Germany. The terms increasingly used to describe these people with disabilities were useless eaters and life unworthy of life. When the war came in 1939, their extermination would begin in earnest. From Bethel, Bonhoeffer wrote his grandmother: “It is sheer madness, as some believe today, that the sick can or ought to be legally eliminated. It is virtually the same as building a tower of Babel, and is bound to avenge itself.” (Metaxas, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy, p. 184)
We live in that sheer madness again today. May God be pleased to raise up more leaders, preachers and theologians who see it, name it and act against it.
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Last year, when Bob Kauflin wrote his Song for those with Disabilities, I think I cried every time I heard it for months. Actually, I still tear up when it starts – what a gift to families like ours!
I know from messages I received that it had impact on other people as well.
When I heard he was coming into town, I wondered if I might get the chance to meet him. As God ordains things, he came to the DG offices on Friday and I had the chance to thank him personally for writing it. He is such a kind man, and I think he was encouraged to hear how that song has encouraged so many of our hearts.
If you’ve never heard it before, you are in for a treat: Song for Those with Disabilities – by Bob Kauflin
The words can be found here or here.
Bob Kauflin is in town for the Gravity and Gladness conference at Bethlehem this weekend with Pastor John. You can watch Saturday’s sessions online for free.
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All conference audio and video for The Works of God: God’s Good Design in Disability are now available at Desiring God!
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Should grief or sickness waste away my life in premature decay, my Father, still I strive to say, “Thy will be done.”
November 21, 2011 by John Knight
Thank you to Justin Taylor for posting a video on Charlotte Elliot, the author of the hymn, Just as I Am.
I had no idea she lived for decades with infirmities that kept her bed-ridden in her home. It adds several layers of seriousness to the words she wrote, calling out to God for help.
May we all say to the Father with her, ‘thy will be done!’
“My God, My Father, While I Stray” by Charlotte Elliot:
1. My God, my Father, while I stray Far from my home on life’s rough way Oh, teach me from my heart to say, “Thy will be done.” 2. Though dark my path and sad my lot, Let me be still and murmur not Or breathe the prayer divinely taught, “Thy will be done.” 3. What though in lonely grief I sigh For friends beloved, no longer nigh, Submissive still would I reply– “Thy will be done.” 4. Though Thou hast called me to resign What most I prized, it ne’er was mine; I have but yielded what was Thine– “Thy will be done.” 5. Should grief or sickness waste away My life in premature decay, My Father, still I strive to say, “Thy will be done.” 6. Let but my fainting heart be blest With Thy sweet Spirit for its Guest; My God, to Thee I leave the rest– “Thy will be done.” 7. Renew my will from day to day; Blend it with Thine and take away All that now makes it hard to say, “Thy will be done.” 8. Then, when on earth I breathe no more, The prayer, oft mixed with tears before, I’ll sing upon a happier shore, “Thy will be done.”Share this:
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