Special needs children, your children and Hitler

I am grateful our church includes people -- children, in this case -- with special needs. They are a gift from God to the rest of us. As members of our church family, they -- as well as small children in general -- have much to offer and to teach us. Those with special needs remind us of God's sovereignty and independence, as well as our dependence. They remind us of our weakness and God's strength. They remind us of a God whose love toward us is not based on our works, merit, qualifications or appearance but is freely and graciously bestowed by the One who loves. And there is more.

Yet, much of the world tells us those with special needs should not have the opportunity to love and be loved by others because their lives are not worth living. It is true today, and it has often been true in the past. In a March 3 blog post, John Piper commented on this reality in Nazi Germany. He included an excerpt from Eric Metaxas' biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer to explain how Adolf Hitler and his subordinates carried out their elimination of the "defectives." You can read the entire post here.

Piper said in closing:

Tell these stories to your children. Tell them with passion. Tell them with tears. Send your children into the world with their eyes sharpened with the bright light of history. Send them ready to name the academic Nietzsches for what they are. Send them with an unflinching Nie wieder! (Never again!) in their hearts.

The cross of Christ sanctified forever the sacred place of weakness in this world of self-exalting strength.

I commend to you a website by John Knight -- senior director of development at Desiring God and the father of a profoundly disabled son -- on God's sovereignty and human disability and suffering. You can find it at theworksofGod.com.