There was once a man and his wife. Though they had prayed long and hard that God would give them a little one to love, they had no child. They lived in a rather poor area of England. The man worked at a large industrial plant. The workers at the plant were active in a Marxist-dominated union, and their attitudes were greatly influ­enced by this particular political persua­sion. Because this man was a Christian in that sort of environment, he did not have an easy time at work. He often suffered verbal abuse from his cowork­ers because he did not agree with their attitudes and their way of thinking.

One day his wife told him they would have a child, the child they had so prayed for. The man's joy knew no bounds. His great happiness even made the hostile work environment more bearable for him. His life took on a whole new direction as he anticipated the birth.

The time came for the baby to be born. What a shock it was to this pa­tient couple to receive a mongoloid daughter. This little one whom they had so wanted to give to, to love, to teach about, the Lord, would require a life of service and sacrifice from both her par­ents. But that was not the worst of it for the parents. They would have to tell others about their daughter, including unbelieving friends, skeptical relatives, and, the most horrible of all, the man's coworkers at the plant. In light of these difficulties, they also had to struggle with nagging doubts concerning their faith and the heart of their God. Did God really love them? If He did, how could such a tragedy come into their lives? With many questions still unresolved, the man had to return to work. His fears concerning the men had been justified, for when they saw him, they gathered around him saying: "How is it that you serve God and He gave you half a child. We don't even believe God exists and our children are healthy and beautiful! It seems that we are better off than you."

Standing there in the midst of their arrogance, the man bowed his head. Shame filled his heart. Why, he had asked these very questions himself. He saw those questions for what they were — expressions of unbelief. But God did not leave the man alone to writhe in his shame. He gave him an answer. The man looked up at his tormentors and his face, earlier lined with pain and grief, was full of hope and contentment. Quietly he gave his answer, "I am so glad, so very glad, my God gave this child to me and not to you!" With that he turned on his machine and began to work.

Wondering Why⤒🔗

How many times we have been this man. How easy it is for us to won­der why God does things the way He does. If we are honest, each and every one of us will stand many times before the throne of grace and want an answer to the question "Why?" To receive a special child will without fail bring up these types of questions in the hearts of the parents who receive them. To have a special child in your family as a brother or sister will cause you to sometimes ask "Why?" To work with a special child will confront you with many things you cannot explain. Even those whose only contact with special children is seeing them on the subway or in the swimming pool or at a restaurant are confronted with certain "Why's." Why do people like that have to be born anyway? What can they possibly do for the world except leech off us all? We end up paying for their institutions with our taxes, they say sometimes. Why should I have to pay to care for some­one else's child? I've got enough to take care of in my own family is often the attitude.

Today I would like you to think long and hard about the answer that the man in the story gave to his coworkers. He was glad that God had given his daughter to him, not because it was easy, but because by faith he was able to recognize the infinite value of his daugh­ter's life. He realized that because God had created her life, her life mattered, no matter how great and seemingly hopeless her handicaps and inabilities were. This man was looking further than today; he was looking at eternity. He was looking deeper than the surface, deeper than the situation, and when he did, he realized that God had something wonderful to teach him through this special child. And God has something to teach us through special children as well. Some of these lessons we would rather not learn, if we had anything to say about it. Some of the lessons we would never want to miss. Let's think about this together for a minute.

I suppose that we will use the prin­ciple that before you get your ice cream you have to eat your spinach in our discussion. Thus we will first talk of a lesson which is not so pleasant to exam­ine. Yet it is vital to our understanding of the lives of special children and of our own lives.

The Reality of Sin←⤒🔗

The lesson is this: special children teach us how radically sin has affected and dominated all of life. That sin per­meates the whole world and all that is in it is a concept that we are able to embrace theoretically, but often we have trouble realizing its practical consequences. When we do think of sin practically, we are often uncomfortable, for we come to realize that all of life includes ourselves. You and I are radi­cally imprisoned by sin. We cannot avoid sin. We sin consistently and often happily. There is not an aspect of life, not an aspect of your life and my life, that is free from the affects of sin.

If you are not convinced, think for a moment about yourself and try to be honest with yourself. Think of yourself in light of such sins as gossip, love of money, love of power, love of self, greed, selfishness, rudeness, inconsidera­tion, pride, prejudice, rebellion, sinful anger, hatred, cheating, stealing, manip­ulation, cruelty and laziness. Have you committed any of these sins? Which one of us could answer "no"? I certainly cannot, though I am ashamed that I fail my God so miserably.

And if you are not convinced of the radical effects of sin by merely look­ing at yourself, look at the world around you. There are wars, famines, and sick­ness. Men and women kill, rape, abuse, and terrorize their neighbor. They spit in the face of God and call themselves the measure of what is right and what is wrong. They laugh at compassion and go merrily on their way, stepping over their slain fellow men whom they leave in their self-seeking path. They abort the unborn for convenience without as much as a wince and leave their old to live out their remaining days in loneli­ness and despair. But there are excep­tions, you may be saying. Yes, by the grace of God, there are exceptions, but God's grace is the only reason there are. For man is full of the potential to com­mit the most horrid of acts and walk away from them consciously unscathed.

What does all this have to do with special children, you may be asking. A great deal. Special children show us that even in the area of health and men­tal capacity, sin has entered the world. Man in his sin has destroyed the whole­ness of life in all areas. These children, in their brokenness and weaknesses, re­mind us of that. It is not their fault. It is also not the fault of their parents or because of their parents' sins. The reason that such things occur is that at the fall, man chose sin and imperfection in place of life and perfection. Because all of us have fallen into sin, in and of ourselves, we will never be able to restore the perfection we lost when man chose to rebel against God. In fact, we choose daily to continue that rebellion that was begun so long ago. As long as fallen life remains, the result of sin will remain.

Restoring Life←⤒🔗

But, thankfully, our lessons do not end here. God has much more to teach us through these children beyond the reality of sin. Through them, God also demonstrates His power to make all things new in Christ. Just as sin radical­ly destroys, God radically restores. God is the great healer, the great hope that this world of sin has. Because of the great restoring power of God, parents who despaired at first that they received a special child, will later be able to tell others of the blessings that child has been in their lives. They will often say that because of that special child they have learned more about their God, His utter trustworthiness, and His great and unfailing love. Even in the midst of tra­gedy, God heals and restores the soul and causes His people to grow toward being able to glorify the Lord more fully.

Special children themselves testify as well to God's power to fully restore the broken life sin has brought. Those who work with handicapped children will tell you that they often observe in these children's lives the childlike faith and trust in God that they themselves lack. I remember one teacher's story in particular. She was working as a coun­selor at a summer day camp. She had been teaching the children to weave small belts on which to hang their small camping items. One little boy, a mongo­loid child of about 12, was struggling to make his fingers perform the needed motions. The teacher asked him if she could help. The boy looked up at her. "I guess so," he said, "as long as Jesus doesn't mind. You see, I always ask Him to help me when I have trouble. My mommy and daddy told me He could help me no matter what." Such a faith is worked in the heart by a loving God who restores and heals. God's power is able to give strength to the weak, understanding to the fool, sight to the blind, and freedom to the captive. These things do not always happen physically; they sometimes happen spir­itually. Therefore, children who cannot walk or talk or even count to ten can demonstrate the mighty power of the restoring covenantal God. This is possi­ble because God is so great that He needs none of man's abilities in order to show His mercy and love to His world. He can show that love and mercy in any life He chooses, in spite of great handi­caps and incomprehensible difficulties. You see, our strength and purpose in life does not lie in our successes, our talents, and our achievements. It lies in God's working in our hearts to restore them so we may serve Him with those talents and in those successes and achievements.

In children who can do little or nothing, God does mighty works. Through the lives of children who are limited in their capacity to learn, He teaches us that grace is given as an undeserved gift from the hand of God. God can take the weakest of human beings, empower them with His strength, and change lives in amazing ways. I know this because of a son that God gave to us.

Someone like Paul←⤒🔗

Our son Paul was born severely handicapped, with the additional prob­lem of a completely misformed heart. We were told almost immediately that he would not live long. We loved and cared for him for the four months he lived and God enabled us to enjoy him very much. When I consider his short life, I am amazed at the number of people who were deeply affected by it. At his funeral nearly five hundred people, most of whom had in some way been touched by his life, gathered by the grave. I remember a conversation I had one day with one of his nurses, a young man in training. He asked me this ques­tion: "Mrs. Gleason, you tell me that Paul is beautiful to you. He teaches you about God. Yet when I look at him I see a baby with a misshapen head who has no future except death. How can he be beautiful to you? How I wish I could see as you do."

I was touched and saddened by what this young man said. He was un­able to see because he was blind, spir­itually blind. Because he did not know God, he had no view of God's purposes and work in the life of someone like Paul. Yet, many who could see realized that in that short, seemingly meaningless life was much purpose. That is because God is the One who gave that life its worth. And God is the source of value in all lives.

Teaching Gratitude←⤒🔗

Another lesson that special children teach us is to be thankful for gifts from God which we so often take for granted. There is an Indian saying: "I was unhappy because I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet." That is to the point, for how easily we become ungrateful to God for the blessings He freely gives to us. We take His wonder­ful gifts for granted. He gives us healthy minds and bodies. Yet, sometimes we allow our minds to remain ignorant, untrained, and undeveloped. We neglect study and thoughtful contemplation. We are quite content to remain super­ficial in our thinking. In fact, sometimes we are just downright lazy. All the while, we view our ability to make decisions, to learn, to remember, to com­municate as ability that is something we can just naturally do. We do the same things with our healthy bodies. We think nothing of smoking or drinking heavily. We feed ourselves junk food and exercise little. We involve ourselves in sexual promiscuity and drug abuse. There are so many ways we tax the healthy body God has given us. When we misuse the wonderful gifts of a sound mind and body, we are falling into an attitude of ingratitude. As much as we would like to deny it, it is indeed what we are demonstrating, if not in words, then in action. We are either consciously or unconsciously neglecting to care for and use what God has richly blessed us with.

For not everyone is blessed with a healthy mind and body. Special children are among those people. They lack what we have simply and freely re­ceived. For this reason, special children shake us out of our lethargy and force us to realize that except by the grace of God, there go I. What we did not de­serve, we have received. May God for­give us when we take His gifts so lightly and with such ingratitude. "I was un­happy I had no shoes until I met some­one with no feet."

Special Gifts←⤒🔗

Though special children lack cer­tain things we receive, they often have received in areas where we lack. They have no ulterior motives about life; they do not usually politic or manipulate for their own benefit. Their limitations make them unable to plan such deceptions. They are more often than not able to accept people as they are. They respond to love with love and do not measure whether the person loving them is one they consider worthy of their affections. As I mentioned earlier, they often have a closeness to God that is enviable. What they have received is the gift of a simple, uncluttered spirit. In that, they contrast sharply with the com­plex motives and actions which consistently throw our spirits in turmoil. They need people who recognize these special gifts they have received from the Lord. As the man in the story at the very beginning was able to recognize value in his daughter's life, so we must recog­nize value in the lives of the special children we see and know. For they, as all human beings, need to be valued. They need encouragement, care, con­cern, and love. They need us to befriend them, to socialize with them, and to protect them. They will not be able to give us many things which we might expect from those who are without handicaps. They are limited in some ways. But they will give us what we could never obtain without them, if we allow them to have their place in the human race and respect their purposes. Especially in the church and in the lives of Christians there should be room for special children.

It is not easy to make room for them. There can be many difficulties and many barriers. Our fears and pre­judices can close our hearts to them. We can also be uncomfortable with them, and that discomfort can cause us to avoid them instead of receive them. We can sometimes have difficulty under­standing them or even looking at them. We may be unable to be patient with their incoherence or unexpected re­sponses and actions. But we must try. Barriers and difficulties are not over­come by doing nothing about them. They are overcome with effort and desire.

For the Christian, faith and trust in God's ability to help one overcome is added to that human effort and desire. Therefore, those of us in the church who are healthy must ask God to help us as His people to reach out to those among us who are weak, who are differ­ent, who are special. We must pray that He will teach us to live to serve instead of to be served. It goes against the grain of our human nature. But it is what God teaches us is the mark of living Chris­tian faith. Christians are to lose their own lives for the sake of Christ. They are to give without expecting something in return; they are to love those whom the world rejects; they are to present their bodies as living sacrifices in glorify­ing God. We are told in Scripture that whoever loses his life for the sake of Christ will find true life. By giving one's life freely to the service of Christ, wheth­er that life is handicapped or not, one will find abundantly rich life. To give our hearts to God is to gain the whole world. One of the ways we can do this is to care for and respect the special chil­dren of this world.

We Christians, above all others, must live in the great and promised hope that one beautiful day sin and all its tragedies and pain will pass away. In Christ this world and all that is in it will be made new. There will be no more weakness, no more barriers, no more tears, no more sadness, no more broken­ness — all will be restored to perfection. And the special children of God will be included in the multitude before the throne saying, "Praise and glory and wisdom and thanks and honor and power and strength be to our God for ever and ever." And they will be whole — and wholly His.