Purpose comes to all of us, even for the one who has fewer assets in the eyes of fellow humans.

When I was a teenager, the girls in my youth group would visit a convalescent hospital once a month on Sunday afternoons. We would sing with the residents during a church service and then walk down the halls, visiting in some of the residents’ rooms. Many were in wheelchairs and some in their beds. At some point, the State made some changes and an influx of physically and mentally challenged children, children coming out of State institutions, became part of the hospital’s clientele. These were children who lay in their beds unable to speak or even sit up.

One boy always had a huge smile when we entered his room. He would grin and wildly clap his hands. He couldn’t talk to us, and he couldn’t move from his reclined position. We would sing a song or two for him. His eyes would glow as we sang. His smile was a gift to us. A ray of sunshine in a gloomy environment.

Visiting with him was one of those sad-happy feelings one gets when you see things that are unsettling. For whatever the reason, the rest of his life would be lived out in a closeted room. He would never know the things we took for granted each and every day.  God loved him every bit as much as he loves me.  It just wasn’t as obvious because of his physical limitations.

Sad to say, I didn’t enjoy participating in that Christian ministry. It made me feel uncomfortable. The things in that convalescent hospital, the sights and smells, were offensive to me. I wasn’t used to seeing things like bags of urine hanging by beds or on the sides of wheel chairs, wild-eyed elderly speaking nonsense as they mindlessly walked the hallways, or others who were lucid but unable to physically care for themselves. The sights which I saw would replay in my mind at night, I’d not want to go again, but I always did. It was expected of me and it was the right thing to do.  I had not yet found the way to see others, the suffering or hurting, the rejected or abusing, through the eyes of Christ. That would come decades later.

Everyone matters in God’s Kingdom. He made this earth and all that is in it. His love extends to All. All. Yes, all. We can’t pick and chose who He should love. It doesn’t work that way. I began to love “the least of these” when I entered into a deepening relationship with God. I no longer was able to see people through labeling them by their behaviors or limitations, I began to see them for who they are or could become in Christ, the person who they were always meant to be. I didn’t set out to change, no. The change was a subtle shifting inside of me as God put more of Himself into my thinking and being. It was Christ in me that made me see others differently. God is love. He, irrefutably, is love. The person suffering with dementia, the mentally challenged, and those who seem to have so little, have a purpose in God’s sight. Some need to change their lives around to help realize their purpose (and potential). In our limited way of thinking, we don’t understand the “why” of certain things. We don’t need to know the why.  That boy’s smile was a gift to us. It was a small blessing and part of his purpose.

God transmits value and worth to all of his creatures; all of them.

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