The Forgotten Ones
The older I get, the more I see God working in my life. I used to miss so much, but as I now look back over events in my recent past, I can’t miss God’s Spirit moving. Last week I had the unique opportunity to attend a week-long Bible camp for developmentally disabled adults. I actually stumbled upon HandyCamp quite by accident (that’s code word for how we Christians often attribute things to God’s Spirit). Our youth group has been to another similar camp called Barnabas two or three times. The only week we could attend Barnabas was the week right before school starts, so I was forced to find something else. After parusing the Internet for almost two hours, I finally settled on HandyCamp, a program run by Lutheran Disabilities Ministry.
My whole life has been spent in fear of handicapped people. Like most of the “normal” population, I was uncomfortable around disabled people. Didn’t know how to approach them. Felt sorry for them. Thought that, because I couldn’t understand them, they couldn’t understand me either. HandyCamp blew that whole idea out of the water!
It took me all of a day and a half to learn that handicapped people are angels. I had so much to learn from these precious souls forced to spend their lives on this earth encased in fragile, deformed, or unusable bodies and/or minds. Many could carry on a conversation; others were unable to speak with words at all. There are other ways to communicate than mere words. I watched one woman “listen” to music by wrapping her hands around the speaker stands. I saw another communicating simply by grunting certain ways.
They were some of the happiest people I’ve ever seen in my life. Most rarely, if ever, watched TV. Most would never own a car, a house, a boat, or any of the “luxuries” with which we often fill our lives. Most would never marry or have children. The majority of them live in a group home with other handicapped adults. There they will happily eek out their existance until their days upon this earth are over.
To the large majority of the general population, they are the forgotten ones. Even the Christian community as a whole has excluded them. Ignorant of the growing number of handicapped people in our cities, churches continue to minister to the poor, widows, orphans, people in other countries and, of course, our own without even realizing we’re sitting on a gold mine of opportunity to share the love of Jesus in a fresh and meaningful way. Most churches don’t have any sort of ministry to handicapped people because they don’t think there are many handicapped people around them. They assume this because there are no handicapped individuals attending their respective churches. What they fail to see is that handicapped people will come out of the woodwork if the local churches starting any sort of ministry for these forgotten ones.
God brought me a long way in my journey out of the darkness of my fear of handicapped people. I still have a way to go. I now look at handicapped differently. I look past their infirmity and look to what’s on the inside. That’s where you’ll find the heart of God himself.
Hawk, what a great post! Good for you, brother. We have all “been there”, uncomfortable by the handicapped. My son was born with a simple cataract in one eye, and now wears a patch and glasses. People stare…except those whose own children have had to endure it. I like it when people (little kids, too) ask about the patch. It’s very minor compared to serious disabilities, but it has taught me an invaluable lesson about the “less fortunate”. I used to attend a church with a lady who had no legs and had slighty palsy, rendering her arms not very usable. I used to “look over her” when talking to other people near her, or “talk down to her” when speaking with her. I didn’t realize I was doing it until one day she said to me…….but very kindly so. Now, I do my best to not be so uncomfortable, but treat them as the human beings they are who just happen to be different from me. Thanks for the great reminder….and good for you, bro. Good for you!