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My wife now uses American Sign Language while leading worship at our church. People have told her that the beauty of sign language helps them experience God. Just as different spoken languages such as Spanish or Mandarin can help English speakers worship God in new ways, so, too, can the languages of the disabled allow us to worship God not only with our lips, but with our hands and bodies as well.

Jesus' ministry of healing gives us hope that the blind will see and the deaf will hear. But that's not all. The scars in Jesus' hands and side are not erased, but transformed into testimony to the Resurrection. We don't know for sure in what ways our disabilities will be healed, but we can have confidence that our resurrected bodies will be even more wondrous than if they had never experienced disability at all.

My family was surprised by disability. Surprised by its unexpected nature, but also by the unanticipated blessings that Elijah has brought into our lives. Down syndrome may well be an effect of the Fall, but by God's grace, it has also become for us a window into the joy of the kingdom of God.

Copyright © 2008 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Al Hsu is an associate editor at InterVarsity Press. He is the author of several books, most recently The Suburban Christian and blogs at TheSuburbanChristian.blogspot.com.

Previous Kingdom Sightings columns include:

Olympic Snapshot | Imagine swords turned into plowshares, and soldiers into soccer players. (August, 8, 2008)

Grace and Peace | How a simple salutation points us toward a new society. (June 18, 2008)

A Multifaceted Gospel | Why evangelicals shouldn't be threatened by new tellings of the Good News. (April 10, 2008)

The Vision Thing | Clarity came just as things got blurry. (February 21, 2008)

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October 2008, Vol. 52, No. 10