Wrestling with an angel

A Story of Love, Disability and the Lessons of Grace by Greg Lucas

- only available on Kindle in the UK.

The angel in question is the author's strong, severely disabled (and definitely less than angelic) teenage son. The wrestling is literal. The struggle to get his son out of bed (he's a teenager in this, if not in his mental capacity!), get the incontinence pad off him, clear up the mess and get him into a bath he doesn't want is graphically told.

How do the author and his wife cope? They don't, really, but they find evidence of the grace of God in all their suffering and trials, right from their first coming to faith: “When people ask me how I became a follower of Jesus, I always tell them that a two year old, non-verbal, mentally disabled, autistic boy led me straight to the cross and since then has been used to display God’s grace in the most amazing ways”.

The book is all about grace. Jake can never give any sign whether he's a follower of Jesus. But the author is aware that God's grace overwhelms any attempt we might make at defining who is or isn't a Christian. A short book, it is definitely not to be read at a single sitting. Emotionally draining without being remotely manipulative. For a more detailed review, with which I concur, see: http://www.thirstytheologian.com/2011/02/14/book_review_wrestling_with_an.php.

A frightening (how would I cope?) and encouraging (God's grace trumps my fears) start to the sabbatical.