Originally published in FaithPot
A seven-year-old deaf boy had no one to talk to at school. Then his Grade 1 classmates at Campton Elementary in Campton, New Hampshire, did something beautiful to make him feel included.
Most of us know how it feels to be lost in a crowd. It’s that weird ache where you’re surrounded by people but still feel totally invisible. If that hurts us as adults, imagine what it does to a kid.
Ben walked into that school and felt that every single day. Every day. But here’s the thing — God didn’t miss it. He never does. He’s a loving God and he saw every quiet moment Ben sat there alone. He was already moving hearts to reach him.
Ben O’Reilly is a first grader with special needs. Because he is deaf, he had no real way to connect with anyone around him. His aide, Cheryl Ulicny, described it with words that sting a little: “He didn’t have relationships with his peers or teachers, for that matter. He was very alone. And he acted very alone.”
New Hampshire has no dedicated school for the deaf. Ben was the only deaf student in his entire district. Think about that for a moment. One child, surrounded by people every single day, with almost no one he could actually speak to.
But then a classmate named Reid Spring started picking up a few signs. And then the whole class followed. And then teachers from other grades started taking sign language classes. They were signing even when Ben wasn’t in the room.
Ulicny put it simply: “You could just watch his world open up with communication. It was amazing.”
And little Reid? He just said, “It’s fun communicating with Ben and playing with him.” Pure and simple.
Today, Ben is not the lonely boy sitting on the sidelines anymore. He has a school full of people to hear him and have conversations with him. His classmates can ask him if he wants to play. His teachers can greet him in a language he understands.
We talk a lot about being the hands and feet of Jesus. These kids actually did it. No sermon. No program. Just love in action.
Today, let’s just stop and ask ourselves who in our world is signing something we haven’t bothered to learn yet. Ask God to open our eyes to that one person around us who feels invisible. And then just do something about it. It doesn’t have to be big, even something small matters.
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