Special Needs

Yesterday I prayed with my wife for all the children, teachers, and even the security guards at Thurgood Marshall School.

I never planned to do this.

I never wrote into my life that I would need to take my child to a preschool for learning delayed children. For that matter, I didn't plan to ever take my child to a public school and I certainly didn't plan for speech therapy. Now I find myself not only praying for such schools and teachers, but giving praise to God for the talents and love I see expressed by different teachers God has provided for my son.

So after that prayer, as Thurgood Marshall School shrunk in the rear view mirror, I got thinking:

This is how God sends us into the world.

We would much rather be woken up in the middle of the night by an angelic vision and sent to our respective mission fields. Or, skip the middle of the night part; we'd be happy to be gently nudged by the Lord during a mid-day snack. But instead, God sends us to people we would never otherwise meet through experiences we'd rather not have.

The reason Philip proclaimed Jesus in Samaria, and more memorably to an Ethiopian traveler, was because he had to flee for his life from Jerusalem. Acts 8 tells us, "And there arose on that day a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem, and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles." And "those who were scattered went about preaching the word."

God has many creative ways of scattering his people. May the Lord grant us who belong to the scattering God the presence of mind to carry the word with us wherever we (haltingly) go. There are many special needs out there.