Today’s guest writer is William Paul Young,

author of The Shack and Crossroads.

Paul loved our son, Nathan, and Nathan loved Paul.

Today, March 1, is the anniversary date Nathan Vredevelt collided with two cars on Interstate-V in Portland, Oregon.  March 5th marks Nathan’s final awakening, his graduation, his shift from the crowd of unknowing, into the cloud of witnesses. His departure from time measured in years (16 1/2 years old), to time eternal measured in clarity, wholeness, and relationship unfettered by death or dysfunction. He lives on in many ways.

I wrote Nathan Vredevelt (a real non-fiction young man) into my fiction book, Cross Roads. In the story line, Nathan is Cabbie, a boy who outwardly displays in his physical mortality Down Syndrome, the pain and hurt that we all know lies just below the surface of this broken world.  Cabbie is juxtaposed against Tony, a fictional character, who is a successful businessman on the outside, but whose inner life is a wasteland. I think we often prefer a presentation of a life ‘controlled,’ though inherently faithless and fictitious, over feeling the awkward discomfort of being around obvious disability and damage. Why?

Perhaps it’s because the presence of Nathans in our world raise haunting and important questions:   Where is God?  What’s happened? Who sinned? How can God be qualified as good when He let’s stuff like “this” happen? Why is he joyful and I’m not? How could God let Nathan bolt from an NBA basketball game onto the freeway, the evening of March 1st?

Let me offer you an alternative perspective that probably doesn’t answer any of the questions I posited, at least not directly.

Every time God joins with a man and woman, regardless of their circumstances, to give life to their choice to co-create a human being, God never ‘fixes’ all the biological, genetic stuff that keeps us from dying or being disabled. All of us, from conception, are dying. It is only a matter of time. However, we are not defined by death and limitations, but by the union of our beings with Life. It is Life that defines us. Death is an aberration and has a sense of ‘existing’ only because there is Life. Life can exist without death, but death cannot exist without Life.

It seems that God’s love for the newly co-created person is more significant to God than His own reputation. Can it be that God prefers being a lover more than an answer-man? That God is more about presence, relationship, and participation than magic? Maybe God has incredibly high respect for what each one brings to the table and is not so concerned about correcting our mistakes. Maybe God is more interested in growing a gift out of whatever we bring, a gift that will make us all look good, and will help us understand the ‘truth’ of our being.

Anyone who knows Nathan, knows he is a gift. We celebrate that the gift is now fully opened and unfettered, fully alive and free. Perhaps, if we had eyes to see, we would realize that we are surrounded by gifts.  Divine creations who may be limited and locked up by brokenness, disability, dysfunction, damaged heritage, and choice – but rumors of glory who are loved as they are, called to fully participate, and destined to be fully opened one day.

Wm. Paul Young

wmpaulyoung.com