On July 24th, our church is going to have a bible study on “ God and Disability .” I’m really looking forward to this study, but I felt the need to explain it a little bit. I remember the first time I realized the ways that human experience of disability can actually affect our understanding of God and ministry. I was thinking through the concept of developmental psychology (like you do). As I was thinking through the “normal” stages of development—from infancy, to early childhood, on up through adolescence and adulthood—one of my good friends had a child with a progressive and terminal genetic disease of the brain. She was not developing along the traditional itinerary of human development outlined by the likes of Jean Piaget and Erik Erikson. As I got to know my friend’s new child, I saw how beautiful her humanity was, even without the “normal” standards of developmental valuation. I began to wonder about people who were not “developing normally.” I began to wonder what “normal” even