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�Disability and �The Kingdom of God ��June 19^th 2026 �L’Abri

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Embedded in the complexity of actual human relations, it is always more than the disabled figure can signify

Rosemary Garland Thompson

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What is Disability Theology ?

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“I’ve come to believe that if I understand God’s logic around disability, I’ve come to understand God’s logic about humanity. ��I understand myself and everyone else more clearly if I understand how God sees people with disability.” ��Amy Julia Becker

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Ways of thinking about Disability… ��

Medical Model

Disability is a “you” kind of a problem
Needs Fixing or eliminating
…..Or screening out
Attempts to make more “normal”

Social Model

Disability is an “us” kind of a problem
Society needs to change
Narratives need to change
We need to tell more stories

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�

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I’ve struggled to find the words to explain the goodness of my son to a world that continually questions his worth”

Micah Boyett

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“In God’s time we do not compare ourselves to the strongest, the fittest, the fastest, the cleverest or the most competitive among us.
The only comparison we make is with the God who walks at three miles an hour, a God who waits for us if we cannot keep up and sits with us if we cannot walk.
A God who always has time for us. Slowness is a spiritual blessing rather than a negative label”

- John Swinton

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“If slowness is the speed of love, then there may well be a deeply revealing beauty in the slowness of disability and a profound challenge” John Swinton

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‘Love has its speed. It’s a spiritual speed. It is a different kind of speed from the technological speed to which we are accustomed. It goes on in the depth of our life, whether we notice it or not, at three miles an hour. It is the speed we walk and therefore the speed the love of God walks” ��Kosuke Koyama�

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Inclusion – What we know we should be doing��Cultivating Belonging – What Jesus leads us towards as he renews our understanding of disability ��Extravagant love - sometimes inefficient and costly, is the difference between the two. �