A special day...
The story for today's post comes again from The Sound Bites Ministry.
I do appreciate reading the weekday emails from this ministry.
And this one that I read the other day was particularly important:
NOTE: On some calendars this Sunday, January 20, is referred to as "Sanctity of Human Life Sunday," and on other calendars it is called "Human Relations Day." This coming Monday, January 21, in addition to being Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, and the US Presidential Inauguration, it is also the birthday of our son, Dustin. As I was thinking about all of that, I recalled something I had shared here before that I felt worth repeating at this time.
STANDING UP
As a few of you know, our son, Dustin, in whose memory this SOUND
BITES Ministry™ was founded in 1999, had many disabilities, both physical
and cognitive. He could not walk on his own, he could not feed himself, and he
could not talk. But he made a difference in the lives of many, many people
before his death in 1998. And he continues to do so today in a variety of ways,
including SOUND BITES.
A number of years ago one of our nephews was part of the
audience at his high school in a classroom debate
on abortion. A panelist stated, "If you knew your child was never going to
be able to walk or speak, and would only live 15 or 16 years, you'd want to
have an abortion." Someone else on the panel replied with a generic
rebuttal and then my nephew politely raised his hand.
In relating the
story to me, he wrote, "I told him that he had perfectly described my
cousin. I told him my cousin, Dustin, had never walked, never spoken, and died
when he was 16. I told him I was very insulted that he had argued that my
cousin, and the world, would have been better off if my aunt had killed him
before he was born… People just assume that no one really knows a person
like Dustin, they treat them like figments of our imagination, and they argue
that they are worthless. But as soon as someone comes along who knew someone
like, or is like Dustin, they seem to have nothing to say."
Thanks to my nephew for standing up for his cousin, who
couldn't stand on his own. As my sister-in-law wrote afterward, "And the
ripples from Dustin's life go on and on..."
May God bless the Reverend David Wilkinson and those who bring help to others through their own sufferings.
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