An Evangelical Church in the Heart of Thatcham

My X makes me human

X

They say that, “X marks the spot”, but what would X be in your life that makes you most human? Listening to the latest episode of the BBC Ouch – Disability Talk podcast, George Fielding, cerebral palsy sufferer, says that his new cappuccino coloured wheelchair, “makes me human”.

There are typically things in our lives that act truly as extensions of ourselves. It might be that we think of a spouse or a partner. It might be we think of our home or just our own little space as an extension of ourselves. We have it exactly the way we want it, every single item in there has been carefully chosen to our most precise colour and design specifications and when we sit back and look around we say, “Yes, this is me!”

Fielding went on in the Radio interview to say, “A wheelchair, it is my main tool, it is an extension of myself. I love my wheelchair, I love showing it off, it’s a part of me.” Perhaps there are some questions which might aid the identification of this certain X in our own lives. For example: “What in my life, if I didn’t have it, would make me feel almost unclothed?” or “What in my life is so solidly assistive that, if I didn’t have it, would make me feel essentially disabled?”.

One thing that has been insanely assistive to me, more influential and more enduring over time, which has acted as that extension of myself, and which “makes me human”, is the book that I hold in my hand, my black leather-bound Bible. No, it’s neither the leather nor the gold gilding, it is rather the naked power of God through the words of God that are making me the most truly human that I can ever be.

I am the Pastor at Thatcham Evangelical Church in West Berkshire. This is an FIEC (Fellowship of Evangelical Churches) affiliated church.