Christian - Just A Kid With Cerebral Palsy by Tony Campolo

I was asked to be a counselor in a junior high camp. Everybody ought to be a counselor in a junior high camp-just once. A junior high kid's concept of a good time is picking on people. An in this particular case, at this particular camp, there was a little boy who was suffering from cerebral palsy. His name was Billy. And they picked on him.

Oh, they picked on him. As he walked across the camp with his uncoordinated body they would line up and imitate his grotesque movements. I watched him one day as He was asking for direction. "Which…way is…the…craft…shop? " he stammered, his mouth contorting. And the boys mimicked in that same awful stammer, "It's…over…there…Billy." And then they laughed at him. I was irate.

But my furor reached its highest pitch when on Thursday morning it was Billy's cabin's turn to give devotions. I wondered what would happen, because they had appointed Billy to be the speaker. I knew that they just wanted to get him up there and make fun of him. As he dragged his way to the front, you could hear giggles rolling over the crowd. It took little Billy almost five minutes to say seven words.

"Jesus…loves…me…and…I…love…Jesus."

When he finished, there was dead silence. I looked over my shoulder and saw junior high boys bawling all over the place. A revival broke out in that camp after Billy's short testimony. And as I travel all over the world, I find missionaries and preachers who say, "Remember me? I was converted at that junior camp." We counselors had tried everything to get those kids interested in Jesus. We even imported baseball players whose batting average had gone up since they had started praying. But God chose not to use superstars. He chose a kid with cerebral palsy to break the spirits of the haughty. He's that kind of God.

Word of the Lord
"But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong, God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not,to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God"
{1 Corinthians 1:27,28 & 29}