There is no bottom to God’s grace. You cannot be too unproductive, too unfocused, too weak, too inconsistent, too consistently needy, too helpless, too sad, or too ill for the gospel to come in and transform your life. If you are in Christ, there is nothing that will keep Him from making you whole and right with God, and to one day, in heaven, give you a physical exterior that matches what God has done in your heart.

The Gospel is the good news that those who believe in Jesus and repent of their sins are made perfect in Christ. All of their shame has been taken away. All that made them broken, dirty, and condemnable has been burned upon the cross. He makes us worthy. He makes us whole. He makes us valuable – no matter what we do or don’t do. This is the birthright God has given us, His undeserving children. We anticipate the fullness of it in heaven while we experience a foretaste of this peace in our relationships between believers. We experience grace, acceptance, and a love that we didn’t earn – a love that is foreign to this world.

But, somewhere along the way we’ve allowed limitations to that gospel to creep in. You are without fault – as long you are in a stable place in life and don’t have any consistent, on-going needs. You are enough – as long as you are productive. You are free of shame – as long as you don’t have ongoing consistent trials that make it look as though you are in trouble with God.

It’s as though we’ve forgotten that Jesus made us whole, worthy and well in a world that has not yet been put to right. We expect each other to live as though the trouble of this world and the limitations they impose on us don’t matter. We expect everyone to be able to live as unbound by the suffering of this world as we do, no matter how much more the world’s brokenness is pressing in on them.

One of the most subversive ways we alienate the sick is by creating Christian performance standards they cannot hope to meet. We prioritize and value things like consistency, drive, focus, and stability. We define a faithful woman as one who keeps her house tidy and her body slim. We define a faithful man as one who provides well and is physically strong. Our sermons, conversations, and posts are riddled with a legalism of able-bodiedness.

It is impossible to be consistent when you live inside a body that has waged a vicious, unpredictable war against you.

It’s hard to be driven when you are forced to stare down the unreliability of your future every time you move your body.

It’s difficult to be focused when you spend more than half of your day’s energy just doing the things that keep you alive.

Our society is designed for the able-bodied. Our pace of life, expectations for homes, money, careers – there is no room for limitations, for inconsistencies. We’re willing to have a sick person around but only if they act like a healthy person. You must pick one: be sick and go where sick people are or be healthy, but whatever you do, don’t be sick in a healthy space.

Don’t need help, don’t move slower, don’t show up late for medical reasons. Don’t have brain-fog. Don’t cancel plans or leave early. Don’t bring sadness and mourning into our spaces. Don’t parent, run your house, your marriage, or your career in a way outside of the standard set by the able-bodied majority.

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