Reflections

     This has been a long, draining week.  We have program audits and summer preparations, grant reporting and daily operations, fires to put out with staff and members and the Board...all the normal pieces that go into the job.  However on top of all that, this past week two dear family friends passed away on consecutive days.  This week has been full of tears and questions and reflection. 

     Scott was almost 60 and had been battling with MS for around 20 years.  Sarah was almost 22 and, due to complications around her birth, had been profoundly disabled for her entire life.  News about their rapidly deteriorating health came across Facebook and for each of them I found myself in the same place...not sure of how to pray.  Was the faithful response to pray for their healing and survival or was it to pray that God would release them from their suffering and welcome them into eternity?  I found that as I thought about Sarah's passing I felt such sorrow for her family's loss...and I felt such joy for her as she was finally free of her broken body, able to run and laugh and see and sing for her Creator.  Both feelings brought tears.

     Both memorials were packed.  The community poured out love and support for the families of these two remarkable individuals and I was struck by their immense impact.  Scott and Sarah, both wheelchair-bound for decades, inspired stories of love and laughter and hope and support.  How does that happen?  How do people who are so completely dependent on others for their own survival become so deeply entrenched in other people's hearts?

     I love teaching Bible Studies.  I love walking through Scripture with people and helping them discover who God is and what He is like.  I tell the Bible Study Leaders that I train that studying scripture can be like meeting Jesus Face to Face.  I am coming to believe that spending time with the disabled and crippled can be like meeting Jesus Heart to Heart.  In many cases they possess a simple heart that loves quickly and reflects their heavenly Father.  There is an internal purity that is often disguised by the awkwardness and brokenness of their body.  

     The Heart of God is also on display in the parable of their lives.  It is easy to romanticize the life of the disabled and God's love of the weak and the broken if you are not the ones who are taking care of them.  The bills, the back-breaking work of moving them, the sleepless nights, the medications and operations, the countless prayers for healing that never came.  The lives of my dear friends have been full of long-term struggle and isolation as they have cared for their loved ones.  And it is not the hard work that ends in a promotion or a scholarship, it is literally the labor of love.  The work that one person invests for another because their hearts beat together.  This self-sacrificing love is the very picture of the love the Father has for all of us. It is a love that holds nothing back, even when we are unable to give anything in return.  For everyone watching, it is a picture of patience and affection, strength and endurance, joy and the hope of a better eternity.  A better example of evangelism I have never seen.

     I mourn for my friends who have lost a piece of their hearts from this world.  I rejoice for my brother and sister who now run wildly throughout heaven.  I am grateful for Scott and for Sarah and for all the other people who God has placed in my life who are disabled or crippled or atypical.  I am grateful for the opportunity to approach the Heart of God by learning from those whom the world would cast aside.  May God grant us eyes to see.