Blazing a Trail to College

More and more articles are appearing about special needs students bound for college including this article from the Wall Street Journal front page. Patricia E. Bauer hasn't missed a one on her site. NPR has several broadcasts in the last week about Roger Diehl at my alma mater, University of Wisconsin-Madison, including a Q/A from callers with similar ambitions and many practical resources.

Josh Muggleton, a young man with autism, is sharing his college experience at St. Andrews in the UK online here at Yeardot. The book Aquamarine Blue 5 edited by Dawn Prince Hughes includes personal stories of many college students with autism. My hat is off to these trailblazing writers who will change the future on two levels. First, with their courage to do something relatively unprecedented and second, with their willingness to be vulnerable and document it for the benefit of those who follow.

Have you ever thought where we would be without the Bible? Those who wrote it had free will like us, and could either have followed God's call or chosen their own. Fortunately for all who came after, they chose to document the life of Christ and the experiences of His chosen people in the Old Testament and the unending mercy of God our Father. They did this all without Microsoft or Apple, internet or telegraph! Painstakingly and unmistakably, they shaped the experience of all of history. Now we are accountable to what has been written.

They raised the bar.

All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness... 2 Timothy 3:15-17

Go now, write it on a tablet for them, inscribe it on a scroll, that for the days to come it may be an everlasting witness. Isaiah 30:7-9

Tell it to your children, and let your children tell it to their children, and their children to the next generation. Joel 1:2-4

For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Jeremiah 29:10-12

photo credit: www.bouquetproductions.com, http://cims.hispanictips.com/uploads/2008/06/college.jpg