considering a different perspective
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Two nights ago, my husband was cleaning the kitchen, I was taking a bubble bath (yes, my man serves me well!), and the kids were playing ... that is, until my son sliced two of his toes. Thankfully, we didn't have to visit the ER or urgent care, but I thought we were destined for one until the bleeding slowed.
Our master bath looked like a horror scene, and I have to say that it's a good thing I was already planning to replace the rugs in there. Robbie didn't want us to touch his foot, and we couldn't convince him in his two-year-old logic that pressure would help and that a bandage was necessary. Eventually he allowed it, but only after he asked for bandaids on his knee, ankle, and right big toe ... none of which had any cuts or booboos. As I put bandaids in places where he didn't need them, I gained his trust to put them where he did need them.
(I think there's probably a lesson there about building trust with families in need at church, but you can go ahead and draw that lesson out, because I'm taking this a different direction.)
As we cleaned him up and fixed him up, my daughter stood in the doorway of the bathroom. My husband, concerned that she would get blood on her princess costume (aren't all four-year-old girls in princess costumes at 6:00pm?), asked her to go to her room. She hesitated, and I saw something in her eyes that made me pause as well.
"Jocelyn, do you think Robbie is going to die?" I asked quietly.
She nodded slowly, her gray eyes large and brimming with tears. Bless her heart. She had never seen more than a single drop of blood before, so she drew her own conclusions.
We assured her that Robbie wasn't dying, and Lee found a clean place she could stay in the bathroom while she comforted her brother and we comforted her. But if I hadn't noticed that look in her eyes when Lee asked her to go to her room and realized the fear in her perspective, we would have sent an anxious girl to her room where she would have thought she was waiting alone for her brother to die.
Many people with disabilities aren't familiar with church because churches haven't had a great track record for welcoming them. As such, we need to be willing to consider their perspectives. What regular activities that are common to us might seem odd to them, such as communion, baptism, or even just the cues to sit and stand at various points during the worship service? What words are mystifying, such as grace, mercy, triune, or hallelujah? What phrases could be confusing to someone who thinks more literally, as some people with disabilities do; would "invite Jesus into your heart" (which is a phrase I think we all should retire, but that's a post for a different day) or "pass the peace" make sense to them?
If you're a ministry leader or someone who has attended church for at least a few years, you may have trouble considering the perspective of someone who hasn't entered a church in years. Or maybe you know your specific church so well that you forget what aspects of it could all be strange to newcomers. For example, my church doesn't look like a church because it was once a hotel building; I'm used to that, but it is a little weird.
Ask God to open your eyes to consider what church is like from someone else's perspective. He knows their perspectives already, and his perspective is invaluable.
Our master bath looked like a horror scene, and I have to say that it's a good thing I was already planning to replace the rugs in there. Robbie didn't want us to touch his foot, and we couldn't convince him in his two-year-old logic that pressure would help and that a bandage was necessary. Eventually he allowed it, but only after he asked for bandaids on his knee, ankle, and right big toe ... none of which had any cuts or booboos. As I put bandaids in places where he didn't need them, I gained his trust to put them where he did need them.
(I think there's probably a lesson there about building trust with families in need at church, but you can go ahead and draw that lesson out, because I'm taking this a different direction.)
As we cleaned him up and fixed him up, my daughter stood in the doorway of the bathroom. My husband, concerned that she would get blood on her princess costume (aren't all four-year-old girls in princess costumes at 6:00pm?), asked her to go to her room. She hesitated, and I saw something in her eyes that made me pause as well.
"Jocelyn, do you think Robbie is going to die?" I asked quietly.
She nodded slowly, her gray eyes large and brimming with tears. Bless her heart. She had never seen more than a single drop of blood before, so she drew her own conclusions.
We assured her that Robbie wasn't dying, and Lee found a clean place she could stay in the bathroom while she comforted her brother and we comforted her. But if I hadn't noticed that look in her eyes when Lee asked her to go to her room and realized the fear in her perspective, we would have sent an anxious girl to her room where she would have thought she was waiting alone for her brother to die.
Many people with disabilities aren't familiar with church because churches haven't had a great track record for welcoming them. As such, we need to be willing to consider their perspectives. What regular activities that are common to us might seem odd to them, such as communion, baptism, or even just the cues to sit and stand at various points during the worship service? What words are mystifying, such as grace, mercy, triune, or hallelujah? What phrases could be confusing to someone who thinks more literally, as some people with disabilities do; would "invite Jesus into your heart" (which is a phrase I think we all should retire, but that's a post for a different day) or "pass the peace" make sense to them?
If you're a ministry leader or someone who has attended church for at least a few years, you may have trouble considering the perspective of someone who hasn't entered a church in years. Or maybe you know your specific church so well that you forget what aspects of it could all be strange to newcomers. For example, my church doesn't look like a church because it was once a hotel building; I'm used to that, but it is a little weird.
Ask God to open your eyes to consider what church is like from someone else's perspective. He knows their perspectives already, and his perspective is invaluable.
