‘ Some Christians are going even further in rethinking what the Bible has to say about disability. Among them is 16-year-old Becky Tyler, who in 2017 preached to 6,000 people at the Christian festival Greenbelt. Tyler has quadriplegic cerebral palsy and communicates using eye-gaze technology and a speech synthesizer. She tells me she talks to God every day inside her head.
"God says to me that He loves me a lot. He says that I am made in His image and that my disability doesn't make me any less than an able-bodied person. He loves us all the same."
[id: a teenager sitting in a wheelchair smiles as the viewer, with a person and guide dog seated on a couch behind her.]
Perhaps unsurprisingly for someone born with a severe disability, Becky hasn't always believed this.
"When I was about 12 years old, I felt God didn't love me as much as other people because I am in a wheelchair and because I can't do lots of the things that other people can do. I felt this way because I did not see anyone with a wheelchair in the Bible, and nearly all the disabled people in the Bible get healed by Jesus - so they are not like me."
She felt alienated by much of what she read in the Bible - until she was given new food for thought.
"My mum showed me a verse from the Book of Daniel (Chapter 7, Verse 9), which basically says God's throne has wheels, so God has a wheelchair.
"In fact it's not just any old chair, it's the best chair in the Bible. It's God's throne, and it's a wheelchair. This made me feel like God understands what it's like to have a wheelchair and that having a wheelchair is actually very cool, because God has one."’
- From “Stop Trying to ‘Heal’ Me” by Damon Rose
[id: black-and-white illustration of a person kneeling before God, a figure with robes and a beard sat in an ornate throne among clouds and winged creatures. The throne has a wheel on either side as well as on the front.]
Becky isn’t the only person to encounter the Divine on wheels. Julia Watts Belser is another wheelchair user who discusses “God on Wheels,” this time from a Jewish perspective:
“...On the morning of the holiday of Shavuot, Jewish communities around the world chant from the book of Ezekiel, reciting the Israelite prophet’s striking image of God. The prophet speaks of a radiant fire borne on a vast chariot, lifted up by four angelic creatures with fused legs, lustrous wings, and great wheels. …One recent Shavuot, Ezekiel’s vision split open my own imagination. Hearing those words chanted, I felt a jolt of recognition, an intimate familiarity. I thought: God has wheels!
When I think of God on wheels, I think of the delight I take in my own chair. I sense the holy possibility that my own body knows, the way wheels set me free and open up my spirit. I like to think that God inhabits the particular fusions that mark a body in wheels: the way flesh flows into frame, into tire, into air. This is how the Holy moves through me, in the intricate interplay of muscle and spin, the exhilarating physicality of body and wheel, the rare promise of a wide-open space, the unabashed exhilaration of a dance floor, where wing can finally unfurl.
On wheels, I feel the tenor of the path deep in my sinews and sit bones. I come to know the intimate geography of a place: not just broad brushstrokes of terrain, but the minute fluctuations of topography, the way the wheel flows. When I roll, I pay particular attention to the interstices and intersections: the place where concrete seams together uneasily, the buckle of tree roots pushing up against asphalt, the bristle of crumbling brick.
I have come to believe this awareness reflects a quality of divine attention. Perhaps the divine presence moves through this world with a bone-deep knowledge of every crack and fissure. Perhaps God is particularly present at junctions and unexpected meetings, alert to points of encounter where two things come together...”
[id: a painting called "Whirlwheel" by Olivia Wise. It is of a person with deep brown skin and upraised arms wearing a long red dress seated in a wheelchair. The art style makes the dress seem flame-like and lends to the feeling of movement, as if her arms are swaying and wheelchair rolling. A photo next to the painting shows Julia Watts Belser, a person with pale skin, short brown hair, and glasses smiling at the viewer.]
