Night to Shine

Night to Shine The Tim Tebow Foundation sponsored its annual “Night to Shine” last Friday evening. The event was designed to give a prom experience centered on God’s love to people with special needs. Daniel Ritchie, one of the presenters, was born without arms. At his birth, when he was not breathing, the doctor asked his father, “Do you want us to let him go?” He grew up to become a speaker and author who earned two college degrees and is married with two children. He eats, drives, and writes with his feet. Ritchie notes: “These people with special needs are just that—incredibly special in both the eyes of God and in our eyes.” Tim Tebow has a similar story: because his mother’s placenta was not attached at the time of his birth, doctors urged his mother to abort him. The doctor who delivered him described his survival as “the greatest miracle [he had] ever seen.” Ritchie and Tebow survived our culture’s instrumentalist worldview: people have value to the degree that they function in and contribute to society. You are what you earn and possess, how you look, and how well you perform. By contrast, as St. Augustine noted, God loves each of us as if there were only one of us. In recent days, he has been making this fact clear in surprising ways. “We all have a spigot to the water of life in us”