MissionAccess

Category: Disability Poetry

  • Fearfully & Wonderfully Made

    MA BLOG Fearfully and Wonderfully Made 022714Greetings & Blessings Faithful Followers of MissionAccess!  Any poets out there?  OK before you tune out allow me to gently remind you that Poetry Fanatic or not, you are God’s poetry—His Poema.  His Divine Creation.

    Speaking of creations divine (and others not so much)…The fanciful fruits of my 2014 Polar Vortex Office Purge just keep springing forth.  Suffice to say however that my latest discovery buried in decades of handwritten journals is far from my finest literary hour.  However since I envisioned myself somewhat of a Robert Frost resurrected (though not yet revealed) I dutifully scratched out this tortured iambic-pentameter treatise of unrequited love:

    Locked upon the cold steel rails of fate

    On predetermined trains with windows sealed

    Gaze longingly upon the blurring field

    Aching just to see what lies beyond

    Helpless now except to ride along

    Thinking back it never seemed so late

    Oh!  If not your eyes had been so blue

    Unknown to you, while smiling, nod and shift

    So normally yet all the while I drift

    On gales so cluttered up with fate’s debris

    That what’s being said is meaningless to me

    For never was it ever meant to be.

    “On gales so cluttered up with fate’s debris?!!” Lord have mercy!  Praise God that our Heavenly Father never penned such shameful atrocities!  For unlike my twisted attempt at Poema, you are fearfully and wonderfully made Imago Dei—In His Image.  Regardless of your disability, God knew you before you were “knit together in your mother’s womb” (Psalm 139:13 NIV) and loved you unconditionally with an everlasting love since before time began.

    And unlike my troubled attempt that successfully snatched defeat from the jaws of poetic victory, God never fails to create each and every human being with a Plan and a Purpose for His Glory.  Let not His Unfailing Love for us go unrequited.  Rather may our efforts to transform Disability Ministry woo more people and families affected by disability into a loving relationship with their Author for all eternity.

    In His Accessible Grace,

    Linda

    Image Source:  http://classconnection.s3.amazonaws.com/567/flashcards/753567/jpg/sistine_chapel1319610419918.jpg

     

  • Snow Day!

    A1-1 NEW HI RESGreetings & Blessings Faithful Followers of Mission Access!  Today as we brace for our first icy installment of Winter 2013 I ponder Disability as Snow Day.

    I grew up in Chagrin Falls, OH just outside of Cleveland (translation:  SNOW).   I truly believe that in His Infinite Wisdom by allowing me to experience the relentless reality of Snow He prepared me for suffering.  From Curriculum to entire Conferences, with so much focus today on Suffering you might even think Disability Ministry is the New Normal in churches today.

    Not so much…yet.  But as we say in TX, we are “fixin’ to.’”

    Perhaps if we rethink the Opportunity created by the existence of people and families affected by disability we could begin to tap into the power of the Holy Spirit just waiting to be released.

    While I was in seminary at DTS I wrote a poem in Creativity in Ministry class entitled Snow Day that allowed me to do just that:  rethink that Opportunity on a profoundly personal level. 

    Because before I could even begin to minister to other people about God’s sovereignty in the midst of their suffering I had to answer this vexing question for myself first:

    Q:  How could a loving God allow MS into my life?

    A:  Snow Day!

    Read the entire Poem for the full effect.  But it really comes down to this simple yet mind-blowing possibility:

    For a thousand years is but a Snow Day, and

    A Snow Day is but an infinite…

                                                      impossible…

                                                                      possibility mirrored brightly where

    Extraordinary’s accessible when “ordinary” no longer is.

    So for you my Faithful Followers I implore you to cease thinking “if only I…” and embrace “Only If He…” in 2014…and beyond.

    In His Accessible Grace,

     

    Linda