The Differently Abled

Mon, 30 Dec 1996

 
Clergy/Leaders' Mail-list No. 343

     Here's another daily meditation from my recent book of devotions
     'Sunrise Sunset' (HarperCollins/Harper San Francisco). Feel free to
     use/adapt it. These appear regularly on our mail-list.

     Shalom!  Rowland Croucher

     Director, John Mark Ministries - resources for pastors/leaders.
       (Bookroom, library, and worldwide F.W.Boreham Trading Post)
                 Home Page: http://www.pastornet.net.au/jmm


                          THE DIFFERENTLY ABLED.


Saul's son Jonathan had a son who was crippled in his feet. 2 Samuel
4:4.


Charles Darwin was right: 'We differ more in the degree to which we use
our abilities than in the sum total of our abilities.' It is also true
that persons differ more in the degree to which they use their
disabilities than in the sum total of their disabilities.

Give one person the handicap of blindness, and they rot, and complain.
Give another blindness and you have a Milton with a Paradise Lost - and
Regained.

That isn't to say that every handicapped person is a potential
genius... but it is to say that in everyone of us there are untapped
sources of power, unknown abilities, unused energies that are more than
sufficient - with God's help - to compensate for any handicap, any
deficiency, any hardships, any opposition, if only we'll refuse to park
by our handicaps and move on beyond them. A term now used by some
instead of 'handicapped' or 'disabled' is 'differently abled'...

'Adversity', says Doctor Sangster in one of his sermons 'is one of our
greatest teachers.  God polishes his jewels that way.'


And if that's your intention with me, Lord, I will not complain. Use me
as you will - I am your servant, and you know best how to evoke the
potentials that lie within my spirit. Amen.
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