I live with a disability and some days I cannot shake the feeling that God shortchanged me. How do I make peace with the body I have?

“And David said unto him, Fear not: for I will surely shew thee kindness for Jonathan thy father's sake, and will restore thee all the land of Saul thy father; and thou shalt eat bread at my table continually.”

Mephibosheth was the crippled grandson of a dead king, living in obscurity and fully expecting execution when David sent for him. Instead he was given land and a permanent seat at the king's own table. The narrator mentions his feet once more at the very end of the chapter, when he is already seated there. The disability never went anywhere. His standing did.

“Nay, much more those members of the body, which seem to be more feeble, are necessary: And those members of the body, which we think to be less honourable, upon these we bestow more abundant honour; and our uncomely parts have more abundant comeliness.”

Paul is writing to a church busy ranking its own members, and he inverts the hierarchy on them. The parts of the body that seem weaker, he says, are necessary, and the ones treated as less presentable receive greater honor. This is not sentimentality about disability. It is an argument that a body missing its supposedly lesser parts is not a whole body at all.