I came across an interview this week that has stayed with me. A Pentecostal theologian, Dr. Amos Yong, was asked a tender question: what does God think of his brother, who lives with Down syndrome? It is the kind of question that could be answered with a dry theological essay. Instead, it was answered with love, from a man who has spent his life alongside a brother he cherishes.
His answer, in short, was this: his brother is not a problem to be explained or a lesser edition of a human being. He is a full bearer of the image of God, beloved, and part of what God is doing in the world. That is not sentimentality. That is theology of the truest kind.
Fearfully and Wonderfully Made
The psalmist knew something about this long before we had words like genetics or chromosome. He wrote:
"For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well" (Psalm 139:13-14).
Notice the psalmist does not say, "I am wonderfully made except for the parts I would change." He says he is wonderfully made, full stop. Every one of us was knit together by the hands of God. Not assembled on an assembly line, where the ones that don't meet spec get pulled aside. Knit — carefully, personally, deliberately.
We live in a world that quietly ranks people. It ranks by ability, by achievement, by usefulness, by how quickly someone can keep up. And if we are honest, most of us have absorbed some of that ranking. We measure our own worth by what we can produce. So it does us good to be reminded that God does not sort His children that way.
The Ones the World Overlooks
Read the Gospels slowly and you notice who Jesus kept stopping for. The blind beggar the crowd told to be quiet. The children the disciples tried to shoo away. The woman everyone else had written off. Jesus had a habit of turning toward exactly the people the world was hurrying past.
Paul put it plainly to the Corinthians: "On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable" (1 Corinthians 12:22). He was talking about the church — the body of Christ — and he was saying something the world finds hard to believe. The parts that look weakest are not tolerated. They are indispensable. The body is not whole without them.
I have watched this be true here at Outpouring. Some of the purest worship I have ever witnessed did not come from the platform. It came from folks the world might overlook — people whose praise is unguarded, whose joy is unfiltered, whose welcome is warmer than most. They minister to the rest of us more than they will ever know. The Spirit of God moves through them, plainly and gladly.
Every Person, a Word from God
Dr. Yong made a point I have been chewing on: his brother is not just someone the church should include. His brother has something to teach the church about God. That flips our thinking around, doesn't it? We tend to imagine we are doing the including — bringing people in, making room. But the Spirit has a way of showing us that the person we thought we were serving is, in fact, a gift sent to serve us.
If you are a parent tonight, raising a child the world has labeled, hear this clearly: your child is not a burden God reluctantly permitted. Your child is a word from God to a world that has forgotten how to see. And if you are the one who feels overlooked, unable to keep up, quietly wondering whether you count — you are knit together by His hands, and He does not make throwaways.
The Family Where Everyone Belongs
The good news of Jesus is not that some people qualify. It is that Christ came for all of us who could never qualify on our own. At the foot of the cross, the ground is perfectly level. There is no fast lane and slow lane in the family of God. There is only the Father, running to meet each of His children — and calling every one of them, without exception, beloved.
Join us this Sunday at 10:30am — Outpouring Worship Center, Ravenna.