Now a ‘what’ but a ‘who’!
My niece came to visit this past weekend, and she was able to coax a few smiles out of our boy (and a lot of smiles out of the rest of us!). Those smiles have been few and far between with these spells of his, so that little smile on his face is like gold.
God is kind to provide good gifts, like people who can light up a house with their presence!
A glad heart makes a cheerful face. Proverbs 15:13a
May God be pleased to provide such a person in your life today.
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Dr. Reinders was right – our “Christian liturgy is replete with songs and prayers full of the promises of what God will do.” Maybe those old hymn writers knew something about suffering and providence worth remembering and even clinging to today.
For example:
Now thank we all our God, with heart and hands and voices,
Who wondrous things has done, in Whom this world rejoices;
Who from our mothers’ arms has blessed us on our way
With countless gifts of love, and still is ours today.
Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise
To all, life Thou givest, to both great and small;
In all life Thou livest, the true life of all;
We blossom and flourish as leaves on the tree,
And wither and perish—but naught changeth Thee.
Praise to the Lord, the Almighty
Praise to the Lord, who hath fearfully, wondrously, made thee;
Health hath vouchsafed and, when heedlessly falling, hath stayed thee.
What need or grief ever hath failed of relief?
Wings of His mercy did shade thee.
And there are some old verses in familiar hymns I think we should bring back!
With might of ours can naught be done, soon were our loss effected;
But for us fights the Valiant One, whom God Himself elected.
Ask ye, who is this? Jesus Christ it is.
Of Sabbath Lord, and there’s none other God;
He holds the field forever.
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I’ve been enjoying reading a new blog, The Works of God Displayed. Thank you, Shannon, for leaving a comment and a link to your blog!
We share some values, like this statement from her blog a few days ago:
If you want to minister to and with people with special needs, I don’t suggest that you study disabilities first. Study people instead.
Become a student of your families. Ask questions about strengths and weaknesses, about what the person does and doesn’t respond well to. Don’t make assumptions based on what you know about the disability; learn all you can about the person. . .
All of the books and methods and strategies out there recommending formulaic ministry are missing one truth: Jesus didn’t use formulas. He loved people.
Shannon has an MAEd in Special Education, which is obviously helpful in thinking about a disability ministry. But she also recognizes that God provides help for those he calls:
While my background helps and while I know other special needs ministry coordinators with similar backgrounds, it’s not necessary. Because, experienced or not, it’s God who is ultimately in control. If we truly believe that there is a biblical basis for special needs ministry, then we also can believe that God is able to provide and equip the right person to lead it at your church.
I frequently reference 1 Corinthians 12:22 here (On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable) and usually I’m referring to those who live with disability, especially developmental disabilities.
But I would suggest it also refers to people who don’t feel qualified to be in this ministry for any number of reasons: lack of experience or education, unfamiliarity with disability, the fear of doing or saying something wrong, prior bad or difficult experiences.
Most people feel entirely unequipped to be part of this ministry. Yet, that’s who God delights to equip! It shows him to be even more glorious when he takes scared, inexperienced, uneducated people who trust him, and then they frequently develop deep affections for the people God has called them to serve.
And those same unequipped people frequently discover this secret – they are served as well, often believing they are the ones getting the greater blessing!
Of course, he also delights in those who seriously prepare themselves for their vocations through education and professional engagement – and who ultimately trust in him to provide what they need as they serve. God will always know a whole lot more than anyone ever will about disability and his purposes.
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I like to live with the thought that my grandparent’s generation was better than mine – more noble, less sinful than this present age. I think there is evidence that was the case.
But there is also evidence that they shared some of this culture’s evil intentions toward those with disabilities, like this finding from a study done in the 1930’s:
A majority (54%) also favored the most radical eugenic measures, government supervision of “mercy deaths” for “hopeless invalids.” Public Opinion Quarterly, vol 2., July 1938, pp. 390-91 as quoted in Three Generations, No Imbeciles by Paul Lombardo, p. 221.
We must stand for those the culture would destroy today, and teach our children to do so after we are gone. Not in their own strength, but in the knowledge of and hope in who God is:
He established a testimony in Jacob
and appointed a law in Israel,
which he commanded our fathers
to teach to their children,
that the next generation might know them,
the children yet unborn,
and arise and tell them to their children,
so that they should set their hope in God
and not forget the works of God,
but keep his commandments;
and that they should not be like their fathers,
a stubborn and rebellious generation,
a generation whose heart was not steadfast,
whose spirit was not faithful to God.
Psalm 78:5-8
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A friend of mine who is experiencing some very deep waters because of disability in his family sent me some prayer requests in an email earlier this week. It included this:
That I would genuinely grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus through this particular season (vs. just enduring it), and that as a result I might become an increasingly worshipful and loving servant leader in our home
I read this and just worshipped God for the extraordinary grace that poured through the computer screen and over my heart as I read it.
His child is already complicated, and new circumstances have only increased the complications.
Yet he wants more of Jesus, and not just for himself, but for the sake of his behavior towards his family.
Thank you, my friend, for encouraging me to want more of Jesus in every season!
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Thank you to Jan Lacher for pointing me to this. This video has been around for almost a year, but I just saw it and was reminded, again, how extraordinary is the love of God toward us.
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In the pile of papers I referenced yesterday were some old test scores. Since Paul attends public schools, they assess his educational progress as mandated by various federal and state bodies.
The things they want to measure, he can’t do. His scores on reading, reading comprehension, math, math concepts and the like were as low as you can score and still be breathing.
The things they can’t measure – like his inherent, God-created dignity as a human being – he excels at.
I used to cry when those came in the mail every year. They still make me sad, not because of how severely disabled they ‘objectively’ show him to be, but because this is the cultural measure of his worth.
And therein lies a danger to children with disabilities not yet born. These are the objective measures of ‘reality’ that doctors and social workers and university professors understand – and which are communicated to parents who live in and breathe the air of this culture. The decision to do away with such seemingly worthless human beings then appears to be obvious.
No, let us talk about what is truly real. God creates some to live with disabilities (Exodus 4:11), he knows all their days (Psalm 139:13-16), he will supply every need (Philippians 4:19), and he knows the end from the beginning (Revelation 21:5-7).
It is entirely speculation on my part, but I believe that my Paul will someday hear these words from Jesus himself:
Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.
And for another look at what’s going on inside the womb, the folks at Abort73.com have released another video – The Case Against Abortion: Prenatal Development.
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We have one of those closets that is full of things we don’t want to really want to deal with. But we’ve started to deal with it.
One of the things in the bottom of the closet was a pile of papers. As I started through those papers I found old bills for medical tests, hospitalizations, chemotherapy, professional services and the like. Stacks of bills, some outlining individual charges in excess of $3,000, $5,000 and $10,000.
All of them paid.
As Dianne walked through I just said out loud, “God has taken care of us.”
Yes, she replied, he certainly has.
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In a Friday New York Times editorial, The Shame of New York’s Group Homes, the closing sentence makes a clear and urgent moral pronouncement:
The answer lies in the state’s urgent obligation to protect those who cannot defend themselves.
They are absolutely correct, though it is not just the state who has an obligation to protect the defenseless. In this case they are speaking of those living in group homes because of their developmental disabilities.
Please pray The New York Times would extend this logic to those even more defenseless: children in the womb. Imagine the impact that could have if God were to wake up The New York Times editorial board to see this issue clearly!
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The Works of God 
Evidence we need to keep talking about the providence of God
April 3, 2011 by John Knight
Pastor John started his sermon on March 20 noting that “it is possible to live in an evangelical, Bible-believing, Bible-loving world and never hear the criticism of the Bible that is commonplace in university religion departments around the country and in the classrooms of many mainline churches.”
The opposite is also true.
Dr. Hans Reinders writes frequently on the topic of theology and disability, and I have found him to be an interesting voice.
But he surprised me in his most recent article in the March 2011 Journal of Religion, Disability and Health, “Is There Meaning in Disability? Or Is It the Wrong Question” where he writes:
(T)he notion of providence does not seem to do much work in the life of contemporary Christianity.
Even though Christian liturgy is replete with songs and prayers full of the promises of what God will do, there is not much attention paid to the notion of providence in contemporary theology.
Apparently, it is not a topic that weighs strongly on people’s minds. (Emphasis mine)
Really? I think about it a lot!
I’ve been to conferences with several thousand other people who also think about it a lot, and they go on to preach in churches to hundreds of thousands of others, who learn to pay attention to the notion of providence. We had more than 3.5 million ‘unique’ visitors to the Desiring God website last year – I think most of those probably also pay attention. Even Time Magazine noted the rising influence of ‘The New Calvinism’ a couple of years ago.
I’m not making fun of Dr. Reinders; his world is different than our evangelical world. It takes effort to look outside our bubbles.
I know I’ve seen his email address somewhere in my studies. I’d like to let him know there are significant scholars like D.A. Carson and Al Mohler who take providence very seriously.
It would be good to have a scholar of his standing (he was just named Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of Religion, Disability and Health) paying attention to those who take the sovereignty of God over all things, including disability, seriously.
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