Reflections on Barnabas

I have just completed a very full week. I have been stressed and stretched. I've been frustrated and felt like a failure, but at the very same time I've been hugged and held the hands of some of God's most amazing children. Most of the children that we served this week were children with Down's Syndrome. While it is easy to feel sorry for them or be uncomfortable around them, after a week of hearing them laugh, watching them play, seeing them love and listening to them sing and pray, I have a whole new attitude. These children are not to be pitied or felt sorry for, they are to be loved and accepted and given their own place in the world God brought them into. They have such a capacity to love and to be loved, I think they are closer to heaven than those of us without the "syndrome" and they just want to live, laugh and love. Let's make them a place right in the big middle of us!