Reading this article enlightened me and caused me to have to struggle with some very important issues. This article really shows the blindness to everyone’s gifts and abilities. The passage that most stood out to me were “this is also the work of the Spirit and not God’s mistake or the product of human sin or demonic activity.” This caused me to really stop and think and stretched me a great deal because I started to think of situations back in my home town. Honestly, back home I always felt that is how I was taught to treat such people with disabilities. To shut them away because there is no hope and that people would only be wasting their time giving them opportunities where they could succeed and worse yet I’ve heard people in the church often intervene to tell parents their child was useless and to check their lives because a child such as this could only be the product of sinners. Besides they would be much happier right? While I always tried to escape this mindset I think there is a view that everyone almost can’t help but see, that we “normal people are almost better than them. Today’s culture, the way we make fun of and abuse the disabled does not help the cause any. People, even when they go out of their way to help such people at school I believe, though they mean well, do it more out of pity then having a sense of equalness to that person. It is also really a stretch for me to think about many such people being able to minister but when you think about it, the way they live their lives is such a testimony and they can still be a blessing. I had always heard the word charismatic growing up but never knew what it meant. It is, like I said before, even though we may not even realize it, we single the disabled out immediately. While they are not exactly like us, it does not mean that they have been “marked” as mentioned throughout the article. God made all creation perfect and good and thus it is almost a false mindset and illusion we have built up it seems regarding such issues.
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