International Stuttering Awareness Day, 2024.  I'm willing to say that this is a day with which you are not familiar.  It happens today, October 22.

     Although stuttering affects only about one percent of the global population, for those who endure it, it is pivotal.  Stuttering, that is, the inability to verbalize fluently, can be debilitating.  While a stutterer knows what she wants to say, she cannot say it easily.  She will "block," that is, she will not be able to voice her words without running into physical difficulty in saying them.  She cannot just say what she wants to say when and how she wants to say it.  Stuttering can be very frustrating.

     Many famous people have stuttered.  One of the earliest recorded instances is that of Moses, the Moses who, many centuries ago, led the Hebrews out of captivity in Egypt into the land of Canaan.  Another is Demosthenes, the ancient Greek orator.  More recent examples include the actress Marilyn Monroe and U.S. President Joseph Biden.

     What's my point?  I've stuttered for many, many years.  Overall, it's been quite a ride, and I could probably talk about it at length.  For now, however, I will say this.      

    Broadly speaking, stuttering is a very little blip on a very big screen of human adventure.  Yet like any physical difficulty, it troubles as much as it teaches and grows us.  It also underscores the riddle of our humanness, capturing at once our grandeur as well as our fragility.  It reminds us of how challenging and complicated it is to wrestle with a broken existence in a finite world.

    But a world infused with God.