John Michael’s Gift
My favorite twenty minutes of each day is when I get to help John Michael eat. He can’t do it on his own, and even with help, he can’t do it quickly. It takes time and concentration on both of our parts. It’s a dance.
My favorite twenty minutes of each day is when I get to help John Michael eat. He can’t do it on his own, and even with help, he can’t do it quickly. It takes time and concentration on both of our parts. It’s a dance.
He didn’t seem to me to think that Moses’s challenges or limitations were worth focusing on. Instead, he emphasized their relationship. Since Aaron did not focus on his older brother’s challenges or limitations, he caused me to wonder, why should I?
Everywhere we go we are being called brother and sister, daughter and son, mother and father. Everywhere we go we are being called into relationship with the lonely and the forgotten, the sidelined and the left behind. Everywhere we go voices are calling us to be more than we ever thought we could be. May we all have the faith to call one another into the reverberations of the love of God, and to answer that call when it comes.
This pandemic may soon be over, but for almost 20% of Canadians who experience some form of disability, the practice of self isolation and physical distancing will not necessarily end. As businesses, churches and community spaces begin to reopen, remember Isaiah 57:14 – 15.
It has been my responsibility and privilege to hold out hope with people who have struggled to hold it on their own. Offering light to one another must not overshadow the real pain that people experience, but small gestures and words of encouragement remind us that grief will not have the last word.
I am limited in my humanity to understand why it took me 37 years to find my husband, and why it took me 9 years to learn teaching was not for me, but I also know that in those times of waiting the Lord was doing important work.
“Draw the circle wide. Draw it wider still. Let this be our song. No one sits alone. Sitting side-by-side, draw the circle wide.”
A kingdom vision is one without hunger, thirst, sickness, loneliness or imprisonment. Rather than, wasting time trying to determine who among us belongs to what category of "the least of these", can we work together and with God toward that vision instead?
What would it look like if we welcomed one another as we are, and took the time to learn how to love each other well?
The movie Penguin Bloom is highly refreshing because it opens a window into the physical and emotional pain that is often associated with adjustment to disability [...] Most importantly it shows each member of the family journeying through their own experience of grief related to disability and eventually coming out the other side, not wishing to die but learning to spread their wings and fly with reinvigorated passion for life.