Did you hear about the pilot who landed his 737 jet on an abandoned World War II era landing strip? The correct runway was nearly five miles away! “It was essentially pilot error…” the airline official said.

    Yeah, no joke!

    As horrible as this sounds, haven’t you done the same thing? Oh sure, it wasn’t with an airliner, but haven’t you come down in the wrong place before? Maybe you said something inappropriate, falsely judged someones motives, did something embarrassing at the wrong moment, made a gigantic boo-boo at a public occasion, or ruined the mood of a tender moment. We come down in the wrong place a whole lot. It’s just part of being human! None of us is perfect.

    I recently attended the funeral of the brother of a dear friend. He was born with Downs Syndrome. The service was wonderful and sweet. But it was based on an assumption that struck me as tremendously flawed: “When this sweet man gets to heaven, he will be made whole and perfect like we are.”

    But Jesus said that in his kingdom the greatest person is a servant, love is the cardinal virtue, the last will be first, the least will be greatest, and unless we become like little children we won’t get in! Jesus' words tell me is that we have it wrong. In the areas of life which matter most, instead of this sweet man being more like us, in heaven we’ll be more like him.

    So much of what we value comes down in the wrong place—how we look, the titles that we hold, the money we make, our physical and mental capabilities. Yet the things that matter most, things like unrestrained joy, unfeigned kindness, expressive love, unmitigated wonder, unreserved forgiveness and uncoerced service are often found most in those we regard as broken, deformed, handicapped or retarded.

    While the politically correct police have sought to reform our terminology, our bias and bigotry have only deepened as more and more of these who are more like heaven are never given the opportunity to grace our earth. That sorta makes an airplane coming down on the wrong landing strip seem pretty insignificant.

    None of us should underestimate the difficulties of raising a child with “special challenges,” but we must also learn to value what is “precious in His sight.” Otherwise I'm afraid we will find our “more perfect” children crash landing in many wrong places because the compass we give them is false.