temporarily abled

“All of us are only temporarily abled.” Al Hsu, an editor for InverVarsity Press and author of “Suburban Christianity” made this statement in the latest issue of Christianity Today. He was reflecting on the experience of having a son with Down syndrome.

As my fiftieth birthday approaches the phrase “temporarily abled” really hit me. For most of my life I’ve been trying to become more abled. When I was in grade school I was a runt, smallest in my class, last one chosen for sports teams, getting by on my meager charm because of a lack of physical prowess. I barely survived my junior high years at one of the roughest schools in the City, next door to a high school that had been the scene of race riots only a couple years before. Ironically I finally started to get some height when my parents (at great sacrifice) put me into a private Christian school for high school (possibly for my own survival).

But now the temporal nature of my physical abilities is catching up to me (and a lot of my friends: you know who you are!). It gets harder and harder to maintain, let alone increase, my “abled-ness”. Not that I’m giving away my elliptical trainer! We shouldn’t disregard the physical abilities that God gives us. These are gifts, and gifts are meant to be enjoyed and used well in gratitude to the Giver. But they are temporary.

We all long for the day when “this mortal shall put on immortality” and there will be no more pain or tears or sucking wind in the middle of a fast-paced basketball game. But that’s a hope that’s not yet realized and will be realized only in God’s time. While we’re stuck with the bodies we have now, let’s allow them to be a reminder of what Joan Mahler of L’Arche USA told Al Hsu: “All of us are abled in some ways and disabled in others.” One way that the world will know the love of God is by how I treat the disabled around me while I remember that I am only temporarily abled.

On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. 1 Corinthians 12:22-23