Seeing the Unseen

On the day we broke ground for the Rowen Glenn Center for Special Needs we were surprised, but excited to see the large crowd gathered to watch a few of us involved with the coming ministry to turn over a few shovels of dirt. We were even more surprised by how many questions we were being asked by those in attendance. What would be included in the facility? Would we have adult care? Did you have to be a member of the church to use the facility? When would it be open? How many people could the ministry serve? Where could they sign up? Is there a waiting list?

Imagine our surprise when we discovered most of those in attendance weren’t members of our church.

What we were beginning to discover is there was this whole unseen community of families with special needs children. Most of them didn’t go to church because they had to stay home to take care of the child. Because most churches weren’t prepared to meet the needs of special needs children, the parents would stay at home with their child. For a while, the other parent would take the other kids to church (If the family had more kids), but eventually, that would become too hard as well. The family would stop coming to church all together. This pattern would be repeated in every area of the family’s life until the family totally lost any connection to any community.

Except for the internet.

With email, texting, groups and community boards, this underground community stayed in touch with each other. They talked about the best restaurants for their children. They discussed which stores carried what products and which doctor in town was best to treat each challenge of their special needs child. From that communication, these parents had found out about the Rowen Glenn Center.

And hundreds of them had shown up.

Who were these people? They were our co-workers and neighbors. Umpires at the Little League games, our mail carriers and police officers – they were our friends, and they lived all around us. We had just never seen them.

Now, of course, we see them all the time. We’ve learned to see them. Once we met these families and understood their struggles, our eyes were opened. Now, we wonder how we ever missed them. There are so many of them.

We shouldn’t have been surprised. The same thing happened when we started a church for the deaf. (No, it’s not a deaf church. The church isn’t deaf. The church is designed to support deaf worship and ministry). Where did all these deaf people come from? Same place as the parents of special needs children – our own neighborhoods. We just didn’t see them.

Of course, this got me thinking. Who else is in my little part of the world that I never see? How about the servers in my favorite restaurant? Who are they? Where do they live? Do they have families? What’s their story? How many people cross my path that I just never see because I’m distracted by some dancing cat video on my phone? How many invitations to friendship do I miss because I’m not aware of the conversation I’m in?

Jesus saw people. He saw Mary Magdalene. He saw Simon Peter. Paul could never wrap his head around the glorious, merciful reality that Jesus had seen him too. One of the first gifts we can give our neighbors is to see them, to recognize their dignity as human beings. All of us know one of the most precious gifts we can be given is someone else’s full attention. In the same way, one of the best gifts we can give someone else is our full attention – to see the other person, to know them.

I wonder who else is in our community that we just don’t see. I wonder who’s in my life that I don’t see. I wonder what would happen if you and I just took the time to look around our world and see. There’s nothing wrong with our eyes. We can see fine. We just don’t look.

And maybe that’s the worst kind of blindness.

Let’s promise each other to agree to look around and see what we can see. We might be amazed at the things God wants to show us.

This essay was first posted in Scot McKnight’s newsletter.