Be you!

Next Sunday it will be our first Creative Café Church after the summer break. We are going to be  basing  our worship on Psalm 139 (not for the first time) Café Church is a group of adults with a variety of additional, special needs and their families. It is always a time of blessings, joy and fun and the worship is sometimes chaotic but always fervent! Two of our members  will be excitedly showing us the medals they have won at the Special Olympics in Sheffield last month, and we will be celebrating their successes and the many things that make each of our special friends uniquely special.

Ben is part of this lovely faith family and he like all of his friends, has attributes that are at once endearing and infuriating! They all have a wonderful sense of self, they have unashamed pride in the things they do, and an equally  unashamed pride in the achievements of their friends. Unlike many (most?) of us, when they are praised or told they are good at something they don't simper, they don't say no I'm not really very good, they say, yes I am, I'm brilliant!

I used to be a little embarrassed when Ben responded to praise or compliments in this way, I'd tell him off for sounding cocky, but then I realised that he was simply living out Psalm 139, he knows who he is in God, he absolutely confident in his relationship with God. He fully embraces  the words "fearfully and wonderfully made" and celebrates being the person God made him to be.

Ben is an overachiever in some ways, his reading and writing skills and his language skills are far ahead of his comprehension and understanding in terms of worldly situations and events, he actually often understands very little of what is said to him or what he reads and so completely misses the point or what has actually been stated. He is not independent in terms of self care and daily living and can easily be upset, stressed, confused or frightened when he doesn't understand what is going on around him.

But... Ben has been doing the read the Bible in one year challenge and he is still up to date! He reads it every morning without fail. he does his Word for Today daily devotion and he has a prayer journal which he writes in as well as speaking out his prayers.

He you tubes his favourite praise and worship songs and sings along or plays along on his ukelele and he googles verses he wants to use for his blog or in his (not very) quiet time.

I always do a craft with Café Church, linked to our theme and sometimes I do it with a calendar and an activity that can be ticked off between then and the next months meeting. Ben sticks to this unwaveringly, in July I everyone a world map and a sheet with all the dates till we meet next Sunday.

Not only has Ben managed to keep up with this, not missing a day but he's shown me that he googles world news every morning and chooses what he thinks needs to go on his prayer list!

In worldy measures Ben falls short, he's not perfect (who is) he and his friends can be ridiculed, teased, pitied, abused, rejected and regarded as "less than". But they are made in God's image, God has a plan and a purpose for them, God sees them as perfect, He doesn't make mistakes. In a somewhat convoluted  and meandering way what I am saying is be a Ben, remember who you are in God, don't undervalue the skills, talents and abilities God has given you. We won't all be  brilliant musicians, artists, leaders or superstars but we all do have a place in God's Kingdom, we all do have a purpose which is from our Heavenly Father. We are all precious in His sight, in Brucie's words, we are all His favourite.