People

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At the community center we were enjoying an impromptu gospel concert when one of our number, a young lady with Down Syndrome, leaped out of her chair and began to dance in ecstasy. The rest of the room roared in appreciative laughter. It occurred to me that the rest of us in the room wanted to be that free, but she was our lightening rod and we were dancing vicariously through her. She allowed us to be free without being free, to do through her what was in our hearts to do, but what we would never bring ourselves to do or be otherwise. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why there are such people like our beloved friend, who are free to express what we long to express but often cannot seem to succeed in doing. "The calf and the lion will graze together, and a little child shall lead them," it says in Isaiah, and it applied there for we saw the heart of a child in action. Of such is the kingdom of God composed, Jesus informed us. To consider that the thinking of our culture is that we are doing a favor to a baby in the womb with this disorder, if we prevent it from ever being born. (And approximately 9 of 10 such babies in the USA never see the light of day.) That would have been to prevent the only direct demonstration of liberty and joy in that room that day. Many of us did experience joy in an indirect sense, however, because thankfully joy is contagious!

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