Learning to worship from the deaf

Tim Challies

Ambulancemen reportedly agree disabled man ‘not worth saving’

Blogger Wesley Smith discusses (HT: Patrick Chan)

Please say a prayer for Ian Murphy

Carolyn McCulley shares the account of Ian Murphy, who was planning to get engaged to his girlfriend, Larissa Whiteley, when he had a life-threatening accident that left him with severe brain damage. “Initially,” McCulley writes,

“… he wasn’t expected to survive. Then, with his significant brain trauma, he wasn’t expected ever to improve. Then he wasn’t expected to be able to  communicate in any measure, such as with sign language. He was not expected to be able to feed himself. Nor use a motorized wheelchair on his own nor even stand on his own. But praise be to God, he has done all of these things! Now, to the amazement of all, he has even spoken his name!
 
Two days ago, Larissa posted that Ian is mouthing words a lot, and thus their life has become a game of charades. Then she added, ‘Ian said tonight that he wanted me to ask blog readers to pray for his voice.’ I am joining the hundreds who are praying and I’m asking you to do so, too.”

Pray for Ian blogsite.

More books reviewed …

Noel Piper discusses the biography of Brian Gault, who was born without hands after his mother took the drug Thalidomide – Look, No Hands!: The Inspiring Story of Brian Gault:

“Just as with any other community of people, “the disabled” are not a homogenous, one-attitude-fits-all group.  My natural assumption would be that a man with no arms is disabled. But that would be jumping to conclusions. I need to wait and find out from him who he is and through him how God is working.”

Adrian Warnock talks about The Atonement Debate: Papers from the London Symposium on the Theology of Atonement.

Adam Walker Cleaveland finds grounds (eh-hem) to appreciate Ed Cyzewski’s Coffeehouse Theology: Reflecting on God in Everyday Life, but warns that schooled theologians may find it a little, umm … weak.

And at the Preaching Today blog, Brian Lowey reviews Kary Oberbrunner’s The Fine Line: Re-envisioning the Gap between Christ and Culture:

“This book has a lot to say to us as Christians, but I would contend it has a lot to say to us as preachers. How do we help people navigate the complexity of being “in the world but not of it?” How can we illustrate that complexity in our own preaching—in our weekly opportunity to speak of culture, speak to culture, speak into culture, speak of a new, transformed culture, or even, as Andy Crouch says, speak in such a way that we create culture?”