We meet all sorts of people during our travels. Recently we spent four days at the hobby-farm of family of home-schoolers. They are raising 9 children; seven of them still in the house and I must say that it was one of the most peaceful happy households we have ever stayed in.
These people had a notion of limiting their activities to a pace where the family had the time to appreciate each other, spend time in spiritual activities, and overall enjoy living. One of the children was in a wheelchair due to a spinal birth defect. When my wife told the mother, “It must have been so difficult to find that your newborn was handicapped!!”, the mother replied, “Oh no; we knew at 12 weeks during the pregnancy. They gave me the option to “terminate” the pregnancy! But I would not and I am so glad I didn’t. My wife and I spent several days with the children of that family. Christine taught some jewlery skills as well as how to cook a Thai dish. I gave a Hebrew class. All the children of that family had a something special, but the one on a wheelchair (a 12 year-old) was particularly gifted in History, Geography, languages, and Bible so he and I had some good conversations. From the wonders of the Hebrew alphabet we went on to Bible stories in the chinese letters. He was such a positive, happy, and bright child. He was not given any special ‘pity’ treatment. He was like one one of the others pulling his own weight with his own share of chores which was to mow the lawn using riding mower.To think that in many countries and many cases in the States these children are aborted! All in all, we were still amazed by the attitude of the mother, until we met her father. Her father was deaf. Since we know sign language we could easily communicate with him. One of the first thing he told Christina in sign was, “You know God talks about the deaf in the Bible!”. I knew about Isaiah’s messianic prophecy “On that day the deaf will hear the words of a book…”, (Is 29;18) but he had a different one in mind. He quoted, “You shall not curse the deaf …”(Lev 19:14). Then he said, “You see, the deaf have a purpose: to test people’s hearts!” I can’t help but trace the powerful attitude of the mother to the attitude of the father who, instead of seeing his handicap as a curse from God, saw it as a tool in the hand of a caring God who also provided a protective legislation for the deaf in His Word.
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