This is Disability Week and yesterday was “Disability Day”.
Since Abba is so good and intimate, 3 weeks after Adam’s birth, we were transferred to a hospital in the North of India which as a program for children with “special needs”.
“Anugrah”
Grace.
That is what it means.
That is what the program is called.
Beautiful, huh?
So, although there a many who still do not understand, there are a handful of people aware of “disabilities” and who are trained to serve such kids and their families.
We are grateful.
Yesterday Raja was asked to speak on behalf of Disability Day.
So he did.
And as he was away speaking, I was home considering all that today now means to me.
To us.
When it once, truly, meant nothing.
Oh, I would have told you that it was special.
Disability day, that is.
And that I was glad there was such a thing.
I may have claimed or imagined that I had compassion.
For those with what we label “disability”
But it was safe.
The compassion was.safe.
And it was offered from a distance.
Because how do you respond?
When you witness the physical suffering that can at time be so debilitating…
When you , yourself, have eyes to see, hands to feel, legs to walk with?
What do you say?
What do you do?
Let me just be honest…I felt uncomfortable.
It removed any sense of security I may have attempted to find on my own.
But He confronted that discomfort.
He walked right into it and made it a bloody mess.
The kind of mess that is needed before something can be made right.
With Blood
Holy Blood
Washed to redeem and restore what I found confusing and impossible to truly share compassion towards.
He gave me eyes to see what I could not see before.
He brought conviction.
By showing me Himself.
By clamping my formed and polished hands between his dusty, blood stained, nail pierced hands.
Offending my (perceived) tidiness with the reality of His sacrifice.
By washing my sterility with His blood bath of LOVE.
This beautiful writer writes it like this
“He offends my flesh to stretch our hearts”
Gosh does our flesh need to be offended.
We must step out of our blasted comfort zones.
To encounter Love Divine.
Why?
Because HE DID.
Because, his compassion was never safe.
No.
His compassion was never distanced.
This infant babe
“Holy, infant so tender and mild”
Touched the “unclean”
Sat with sinners.
Loved the unlovable.
By living among them and immersing Himself in them, yet unstained Himself.
Then
He went thru a Holy Blood bath Himself.
Not one that was needed for Himself…but for us.
Stained sinners.
He was bloodied on our behalf.
He who was once what we sing, “holy infant so tender and mild”
Became “a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering”
The prophet Isaiah even wrote “he had no beauty or majesty to attract us to Him”
Yet we attempt to create his face by our finite hands and we wear it on tshirts as if it captures a fraction of who He was.
We think we can comprehend the depth of who He was.
But do we want to accept that
“He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to Him, nothing in His appearance that we should desire him…like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised and we esteemed him not”
He who was once that little angelic baby in that manger mild.
Became all these things.
These offensive things.
So that our infirmities could be taken up and our sorrows carried.
What offensiveness this would be!
Unless we understand that we needed it.
For we too, were disabled.
In our spirits.
Deformed.
Destitute.
Destined for continued death.
Until Love stepped in.
Compassion came down like rain from heaven.
Compassion crossed the barrier and came closer than we are comfortable to admit.
So that is why we cannot let compassion by distanced.
We cannot play it safe when it comes to love.
For “He became sin who knew no sin…”
SO THAT
“we could become HIS righteousness”
That is love.
and “perfect love casts out fear”
So dear ones.
As we, once disabled, rejoice in the blood bath that made us able.
Let us love those around us.
Let us not keep a distance from them.
Let us not play it safe when it comes to love.
For
“God is love”
And He defined it to us with much more than distanced safety.
He entered into the mess and the chaos.
And He invites us to follow Him.
As He makes beauty from our chaos.
And as He ables are disability.
So as He has invited us to come closer.
To call one that the world labels “disabled” and “special” our first son.
He has wrecked me with His love.
And it has been beautiful.
I am so thankful His blood brought me near.
Removed the distance and taught me compassion.
By His standards.
And not my own.
Beautiful