Deacon Anne Strong

Dear friend,

In the Gospels, people are depicted as being sick, poor and in need of help. “Sickness” is part of what it is like to be a real person.

Wherever our Savior appears, the sick gather. We see people who have mental illness; are deaf or blind; or people who come out of the porticoes to which they have been banished and reveal themselves to Jesus.

Some of the people are healed who only come into His vicinity. What did Jesus say to the man in John’s Gospel (5:1-15)? “Take up your mat and walk. Your faith has helped you. Go!” This points us to the Way of Christ’s passion and to the cross.

From Bethlehem to Golgotha Jesus healed the sick and accepted the outcasts. Jesus took on our disabilities and made them part of His life.

Our crucified Christ encompasses every life and makes it His own. We humans who judge according to our ideal images may think that people who have mental illness, or are blind, or deaf, have a life that is less-than. But God loves us all equally! Every human being is in the image of God. Every one of us is a reflection of God in this world.

The World Council of Churches declared: “Churches without persons with disabilities are disabled churches.”

Our Christian community is a servant community. Friendship is the foundation of mutual help. Whenever people with and without disabilities learn to live together, without the labels of helper and needy attached, mutual giving can exist. “Isms” and phobias have no place. All are welcome.

Anne Strong, Deacon