Christmas may be the day we reserve for exchanging gifts. However, Easter has its gifts as well.
First, there is the gift of eternal salvation for all who believe Jesus Christ resurrected after shedding His blood as propitiation for our sins: eternal salvation for all who accept, yet rejected by most.
Then there are other gifts from God, gifts that also go rejected. However, one of those gifts will bless my Easter.
My wife has a good friend who is just a few years older than she is. Sometimes he calls her to share details of his life, the ups and downs we all face. Other times he calls to make plans for us to watch his basketball games or schedule that never-yet-held camping trip.
Now he has some quirks, we all do. For example, I tend to chew my fingernails down to the quick, which is probably least of my traits that go unrecognized by me. Certainly, no one is perfect.
Our friend, who I will call Joe, occasionally calls to invite himself over for a holiday meal. Sure, we call to invite him at times, but one of his quirks requires him to initiate the request.
A week ago, Joe called to invite himself over for Easter. So, on Sunday, my oldest son will drive him to our church and, afterwards, to our home for a small meal. His presence will bless our family, though he will not stay long. Within an hour or so he will become antsy and begin asking to be driven home—just one of those personal quirks.
But it is the essence of Joe, his uniqueness, that brings light into our home. We all will share stories, laugh, and enjoy each other’s company. My family and I will see life from a different perspective and grow as a result. You see, Joe’s life and presence is a gift from God. However, to many, since Joe is intellectually disabled, his very existence is deemed a failure, something to be rejected.
I grew up in a time when euphemisms changed as the intellectually disabled were, when able, moved from institutions to public schools. These gifts from God were “mainstreamed” back into the lives of everyone else. They benefited, but so did we. Their humanity was restored in our eyes. A worthy end.
However, while today no one would publicly belittle Joe as a person, many still dehumanize him as a class. In Western Europe and the US, babies who test positive for certain genetic conditions, including Downs Syndrome, are aborted so that—as the argument goes—people like Joe will not have to suffer, nor will society have suffer. However, a glance through my kitchen window on Sunday will show no suffering, whatsoever.
These folks speak of eradicating Downs Syndrome as if by vaccination, when they really mean they are engaging in euthanasia to lop off the left tail of the bell curve—their rejected tail that comprises the lives of folks we know and love. This they call progress.
Yet, in a day when so-called progressives demand self-affirmation and the end to dehumanization, they have no qualms counseling others to rid the world of future Joes. And these progressives are becoming more successful in their endeavor. So much so that, in Iceland, a positive prenatal test for Downs Syndrome leads to counseling that is almost 100% effective in another child being aborted.
While folks on the left dredge the past for any transgression of the current PC code, they justify a crime they will have to atone for when that code changes in the future. They may pretend to champion those with special needs in public, but we know what they are whispering in private.
My family will enjoy Joe’s presence this Easter. His life is a gift from God, regardless of who rejects his humanity.
Thank you, Sir!
God bless Joe. And his parents.
Is the headline ‘the latest news!’
No. It is called the Good News.
Jesus didn’t die ‘FOR our sins’ he died BECAUSE of them, contemporary to the time of his life. Not some esoteric scapegoating of ‘original sin’. He came so save all the world, too, not just those who believe, ‘especially those who believe.’ The Angel Gabriel, the real one, not miss latest news, brought tidings for, as it is understood by most mainstream Christians, our atonement with God. The Salvation was from envy, pride, hatred, not from high taxes or rights to guns! Those are not True rights except in the head of a numbskull.
He was, like many who suffer; a victim or moral evil which lead, ultimately to his agonising death and he knew it would happen.
His perfection meant that it was inevitable that he would be killed.
Holy communion is a remembrance of that.
Easter is not, like some Johny come lately’s seem to think, a sad time. The story is there every day of the year to know and understand. Yet so much fake hand wringing at Easter?
Problem comes when you invite sadists into the church who don’t really have faith at all.
I state again. Baby girls and disabled babies are drowned or left out in the sun to die in India. It’s still happening. How many will continue to shoot the messenger about that and never apologise? Answer? At least one who knows who he is.
First repentance, then forgiveness. In that order.
1 Lastly, those who don’t even know of God are also saved.
2. There is no such thing as hell. There is judgement and ultimate justice, I trust it the weak in faith want to take it into their own hands and abuse this false power.
Find a different stick to beat people with. Truth can’t be transmitted into a human heart or mind by force.
My great-niece is a down syndrome child who is in her thirties. I cannot imagine her parents having her aborted those thirty-something years ago. We all love her deeply, and consider her a blessing that God gave us to take care of and love.