Does your church work to show your community that people with disabilities are truly welcomed and embraced? If not, what good is your faith? Faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead, but faith that is accompanied by action is a beautiful offering of love toward God and other people."
As Christmas approaches and I prepare to celebrate the miracle of Jesus’ birth, I reflect on how the Saviour of` the world was once a tiny, vulnerable baby who depended on others for survival and remained vulnerable even as a man (Isaiah 53). Despite or perhaps because of His reliance on others, Jesus was called Emmanuel, "God with us".
I thought I had outgrown that keen sense of yearning, but then I became a mother of a child on the autism spectrum. I found a whole different level of yearning for all of the answers to be revealed as I contemplated an unknown future.
These parents all have stories of dropping off or picking up their daughter or son from a ministry environment only to be told that the church is not set up to handle their child. These families have all experienced what Mary and Joseph felt when they were trying to find a place for their child to be born.