An Accessible Church Presents to Persons with disABILITIES an Accessible God!

I was reading an article yesterday evening that really placed a new perspective on how I view church, God, and people with disabilities. The article opened up with a question that stated, "do you have many disabled persons attending your church? If not, why not?" After meditating upon this question and how I would answer it, I began to broaden my scope of thinking beyond just the walls of Crossroads and think about the church in general. And what I began thinking was how affective are we as a church reaching and ministering to people with disabilities and how that is translated into whether God is or is not accessible. I mean, yes, Crossroads as a whole has truly embraced the importance of accepting people with all forms of disabilities and really making it a place for all people to come. Unfortunately, that is not the norm. Most churches do not have an interpreter for the deaf, or a braille bible for the blind, or a class for the developmentally challenged. All they typically will have is a few parking spaces and if it is a new building, a larger bathroom stall. But as I read this article, it presented me with the two extremes that have gone from the Old Testament to the New Testament with regard to attitude regarding disabilities. For example Lev 21:17-23 displaying exclusion while Jesus in Luke 14:12 reminding us of the importance of inclusion. So when considering the church at large, what attitude or what position ought we embrace. Well, of coarse for many of us we would say inclusion - but when we see a person with any form of a disability and we choose to do nothing or nothing more, then which one have we truly taken? You see, as this article presented to me, the amount of accessibility that a church provides for the disabled will often times be translated into how accessible God is. The writer of this article then ended with this statement, which caused me to think a little differently: "persons with disabilities have a lot to teach able-bodied persons about living their faith. Many of us have overcome lifelong obstacles that most of you will only face in the final few years of your life. God makes his presence known through his church. He makes his church's presence known through his people; all his people! An accessible church presents to persons with disabilities an accessible God." So my prayer is that we never take on the attitude that what we are doing is enough - let's continue to pray and have a longing to do more in order to love more and reach more, all for the sake and the glory of Jesus Christ!!!!