Everybody belongs. Everybody serves.
Disability
Kelly
James
Staci
Steve
December 3 has been designated by the United Nations as the International Day of Persons with Disabilities. Read a snapshot here. What can you do in your church, your home, your place of employment do to recognize this day?
The National Association of Evangelicals produced a document in 2004 called “For the Health of the Nation.” The scope of the document reaches far beyond the “traditional” evangelical issues of abortion and marriage.
I read today about Sir James Dyson’s newest product, the air multiplier, which blows a lot of air at constant rate without any visible moving blades. It’s just a big hoop atop a base. It sounds amazing. Dyson and his company have made their living by thinking outside the box about commonplace things.
Most of us forget that everyone needs care and respite, not just some of us. Helen Keller championed that a healthy society will not just look at a person’s need for care, but also their need for justice.
Although we North Americans are getting better at emphasizing diversity in the workplace, people with disabilities tend to be the last ones that diversity practitioners seek to recruit for jobs. I ran across these reflections by Rob McInness today on why that might be so. He writes,
Meditating on Luke 9:50 this morning. Jesus said, “Whoever is not against you is for you.” Sometimes advocacy gets wearisome. It seems like one has to keep pushing constantly to see movement in inclusion of people with disabilities in churches, society, and other people’s lives. My temptation over time is to see most people as being against the work that Disability Concerns stands for. But Jesus pulls me up short on that temptation. “No,” he says, “Whoever is not against you is for you.” That turns the tide. Since most people are not against inclusion, they must be for it.