God often hears the unspoken prayer of the heart and answers it that he may witness to us of his love and beneficent care for his children. Such an incident occurred to me nearly 48 years ago.
My parents decided I should attend a Christian summer camp for children. On the surface, this would seem a good and healthy choice for an eight year boy, but often, without payer and insightful understanding, good intentions go awry.
Having grown up severely visually impaired and having attended a school for the blind, I lacked the required social skills to function successful among non-handicapped children. They could do things I could not do and weren’t slow in making their superior advantages and assets a means of promoting their own self-worth at the expense of my own self-image.
You may think it strange to grow up in a minister’s family and remain ignorant of the first principals of Christ’s love. It is often true that the last to receive a knowledge of Christ are the children of a minister, but such is frequently the case. My father was cold and indifferent toward me because I was less then perfect, needing special love and nurturing that my older sister did not require. Rather then rising to this challenge, he chose to ignore my needs in favor of ministering to the congregation, a more congenial task as he often received public praise that fueled his ego where such praise would be absent from his family.
Being bundled off to camp was a lonely and socially traumatic experience. All children are vulnerable to ridicule and insult and especially to social isolation. Because of my handicap, I was largely left out of camp activities, ignored by the other boys in my cabin and thoroughly miserable.
If you have never experienced a disability in your life, you may find this narrative hard to understand but God used these circumstances to make himself know to me in a way that I have never forgotten. He often uses adversities of life to teach lessons of salvation and righteousness. While I do not envy those who posses normal faculties, I would remind you, who are thus favored, of Christ’s own words as paraphrased by me. When he extended, through a parable, the invitation to the wedding feast, those who were favored or blessed with physical health and abilities, uniformly rejected this gracious invitation while the refuse of the world, the handicapped, the lame, the halt, the blind, responded and came into wedding feast which is symbolic of our heavenly home.
An apparent contradiction in Christ’s kingdom is here revealed. Only when we discern our need will we respond to Christ. Those who thus fail to see themselves as needy, who spurn the less fortunate, turning a death ear to their entreaties for help, are the ones who reject Christ, who see in Him nothing of interest, thus forfeiting salvation because they have no need. However, I was needy and knew it, although I could not articulate this need in an adult fashion.
One Sunday morning, the boys, from my cabin, decided to go down to the lake and, while sitting on the dock, would read their Sunday school lesson. When I heard this proposal, my heart sank, for I could not see well enough to read the lesson and would thus suffer another instance of humiliation and embarrassment when I was left out of a social activity.
The morning was warm, and breezy, the sun shown brightly and the water looked inviting. As we trooped to the dock, lesson books in hand, an older man, whose name I have forgotten, took me to another dock and read the lesson to me so I could participate in the discussion following its reading. He discerned my need, as my father seldom did, and acted upon it. This was the first instance when I realized that an adult man was sensitive to my special needs and was willing to meet them, through his own efforts.
The impression, thus made, has never left me for he testified of the love and concern of God. While I have forgotten his name, I shall never forget the witness he offered that morning of the nature and character of God. Think not that your efforts to bless others are not noticed or overlooked. Someone is always watching! When we take the time to bless others, even in the most trivial fashion, we little realize the potential for good this simple act may have in the saving of a life.
While my father failed to instill within me a love for God, this nameless older man planted the seeds that have since sprang up into blossoms.
Praise the Lord!