I have been a pastor among people with intellectual disabilities for five years. One might imagine that this involves an interesting variety of activities. And it does. But increasingly, I have come to believe that the pastoral care that I offer can be described rather simply. In one way or another, this is the message that I share:

You are beloved.

That’s it. It doesn’t really matter whether I’m caring for the residents of my community or the staff that support them. Each person seems to have the same need. Henri Nouwen expressed it this way:

“The more intimately I come to know people with [intellectual] disabilities, the more I am convinced that their deepest suffering is not in their inability to read, study, speak, or walk but in their deep fear of rejection, of being a burden; in this respect, they do not differ from me. Our greatest suffering comes from losing touch with our belovedness and thinking of ourselves only as a useless, unwanted presence.”

Not knowing our belovedness leads to a whole host of problems. Maybe we become anxious or depressed and then withdraw from our community. Or alternatively, in our insecurity, we make comparisons to others. We try to build ourselves up by tearing others down. Perhaps we become envious or greedy; we try to hoard things to ourselves, so that we can impress others with what we have or know or can do.

Meanwhile, in the incarnation, we encounter Christ, the beloved child of God, who took on skin and bones so that we would also know our belovedness. So this is the message that I think God gives to each of us:

You are my beloved child. With you, I am well pleased.