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DIANE GORMAN (SWINDON GORSE HILL)

I have a learning disability and have been helping with Sunday school activities. At Christmas our corps hosts Christmas meals and a carols. I have helped the children with the Nativity play c for a couple of years now and really enjoy it. We have a f very inclusive and supportive team, and we learn songs v and practise the actions together. There are two of us a with learning disabilities and when we need a break to w rest, the team are very understanding. r

Respect our views and support our participation so R that we feel valued, and our disability is not seen as a t

problem.p If you ask people, most will tell you what they like or need. o Invite and include everyone. Not just those with a disabilityI . If I want to volunteer and help, support me to do that and give me tasks that I can do. m Consider visual challenges C . Provide programmes and songs in large fonts or in braille. My disability affects my eyesight. i Sometimes when PowerPoint presentations are used, I struggle S to see them because of the font sizes. t

DIVISIONAL ENVOYS TRISTAN AND MANDY LANCELEY (SOUTH LONDON)

We are lifelong Salvationists and we both live with a disability. Our corps is extremely inclusive, supportive and encouraging in all our endeavours, including our ministry.

Offer a warm welcome and be accessible. It’s important that seats can be removed to accommodate wheelchair users and to have members on hand to help people find seats and facilities. Provide a ramp or level access to main entrance doors and halls and accessible toilets. Consider audible challenges. Installing a hearing loop system, adjusting volume levels or having someone to sign for those with hearing difficulties are just some of the options that you could consider. Help in other ways. A person may not be able to sort toys or food for parcels, but could they make refreshments, wrap gifts or write labels? Just providing them with a chair to sit on so that they don’t need to stand all the time and are able to rest every now and then can make a big difference.

Provide open doors, hearts and arms to welcome people

and make everyone feel worthwhile and wanted. Joining with others at Christmas can bring great comfort to people and help them not to feel isolated or lonely. When we find that inclusiveness and we succeed at something, however small, it really helps with our mental health and wellbeing and increases our confidence, which helps us in other areas of our lives.

Unfailing

Captain Rob Westwood-Payne describes the extent of God’s love

PSALM 143

HAVE you ever used a redundant phrase? Something like ‘an unexpected surprise’, without stopping to realise that all surprises are unexpected.

PAUSE AND REFLECT

Can you think of any other redundant phrases? In Psalm 143 the psalmist speaks of the Lord’s ‘unfailing love’. Isn’t that another redundant phrase? Surely true love can only ever be unfailing?

Perhaps the psalmist chooses the phrase because only God can love with unfailing love. Our love fails too often. It is just as well our loving relationship with God does not depend on our love as much as on God’s unfailing love.

The opening lines of Psalm 143 examine our love for God compared with his love for us, and point to the fact that God’s love is the decisive one: ‘Lord hear my prayer, listen to my cry for mercy; in your faithfulness and righteousness come to my relief. Do not bring your servant into judgement, for no one living is righteous before you’ (vv1 and 2).

The fact that we are in relationship with God at all is a testament to God’s unfailing love – his faithfulness and righteousness – not to ours. It is God’s unfailing love that ensures he always does the right thing and is always faithful. The supreme expression of God’s unfailing love is him sending his one and only Son, Jesus Christ, to redeem us. All we can do in response is to give him our sin and show our willingness to trust in Jesus.

PAUSE AND REFLECT

How would you describe God’s unfailing love?

It’s difficult, isn’t it? Elsewhere, the psalmist describes it like this: ‘God’s love is meteoric, his loyalty astronomic, his purpose titanic, his verdicts oceanic. Yet in his largeness nothing gets lost; not a man, not a mouse, slips through the cracks’ (Psalm 36:5 and 6 The Message).

Much later, in his letter to the church at Ephesus, Paul prays his readers would experience and understand God’s love, unique in its width, length, height and depth (see Ephesians 3:18). It’s incredible! It’s beyond description that we are recipients of an unfailing love.

PAUSE AND REFLECT

Do we find it difficult to sustain our confidence in God? Why?

In response to this unfailing love, the psalmist wants to hear God’s word: ‘Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love, for I have put my trust in

Through the week with Salvationist

– a devotional thought for each day

by Lieut-Colonel Brenda Oakley

SUNDAY

O worship the King, all glorious above;/ O gratefully sing his power and his love;/ Our shield and defender, the Ancient of Days,/ Pavilioned in splendour and girded with praise.

(SASB 52)

MONDAY

I remember the days of long ago; I meditate on all your works and consider what your hands have done. (Psalm 143:5)

TUESDAY

When around me all your work I see,/ Made in the likeness of God,/ What am I that you should notice me,/ Made in the likeness of God? (SASB 381)