By Moe Wosepka, Executive Director
Montana Catholic Conference

Two weeks ago, I was in Washington, D.C., discussing national and state legislative issues with my counterparts from 38 other states. During one of the breaks Allen Sanchez, the director from New Mexico, told me a story about a young boy he knows named Andrew who has severe health problems.

Andrew is 6 years old and has a growth on his brain the size of an orange. The growth is placing pressure on the brain and has stunted his development, so his current developmental age is 3. He does not walk well and he has never spoken. The growth is inoperable and the child is not expected to survive for many more years.

One day a nun came to the hospital to present a program for the children. She had a toy farm set consisting of toy sheep, a barn and a fence with a gate. She put the farm set together on a table in front of the children and placed the sheep inside the fence. She opened the gate and took out one of the sheep. She told them how God loves them, and he knows their names.

God gives all of us the ability to make choices, and sometimes we do things we shouldn’t do.

But she told them that even then God invites them back into his family where they can be forgiven. She then placed the sheep back in the pen with the other sheep. She told them when one of the sheep wandered away that God became very concerned and He would find the sheep and call it by name and invite it to come back. He does the same for all of us, the nun told them. He knows our name and calls us back to his family and to safety inside the fence.

Later that day, Andrew disappeared. The nurses were frantic. He had never disappeared before. They called out all available staff to look for Andrew. They looked for hours to no avail. Andrew was not to be found. Finally, that evening, after thinking he must have gone outside or someone came and got him, one of the nurses heard a noise coming from behind a big chair in the patient’s lounge. The noise was Andrew talking.

She was astounded because none of them had ever heard him speak before. He had taken one of the toy lambs from the nun’s presentation and was hiding behind the chair talking to the lamb. He would pet the lamb, and tell it over and over, “You are going to be OK, because God knows your name.”

Andrew was using the gifts God gave him to care for the lamb and witness to God’s glory. While he was caring for the lamb he was witnessing to the nurse who had never before heard him speak.

All of us are important in God’s eyes, and we should also be important in the eyes of each other. In view of the recent court ruling allowing physician-assisted suicide in Montana, we need to think about the value our lives may have to others. Let us work to support life, all life, from conception to natural death.

May God bless you and your loved ones this Christmas and throughout the New Year. I pray that your gifts and mine will glorify God by reaching out to help those the least among us, and in the process bless those we may never know who may be touched by our witness.

Moe Wosepka is the executive director of the Montana Catholic Conference. He can be reached by phone at 442-5761 or e-mail director@montanacc.org.


Published in The Montana Catholic, Vol. 24, No. 12, December 19, 2008.