God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God (1 Corinthians 1:27-29).

Last week I attended the most pro-life funeral I have ever witnessed.* Actually, to characterize it as such may be misleading, for it had nothing to do with politics or abortion. But bear with me.

Anna was one of ten children in the Johnston family, four of whom were adopted. Providence, the first adopted child, is a girl from Hong Kong who has Down syndrome. Then Chris and Julianna adopted Slavic, a blind and autistic teenage boy, from a Ukrainian orphanage. I suspect they thought they were done after that, but realized there was more room at their table, so Chris returned to Ukraine and brought back Miriam and Anna, both teenagers.

Miriam has significant disabilities, but not as severe as Anna’s. Anna had cerebral palsy and, when Chris found her, she weighed just nineteen pounds. Despite concern she would not survive the flight, she made it to the US and was immediately admitted to a hospital in Winston-Salem. Over time, Anna began to gain weight and grow, somewhat making up for the years when she was starving and unable to develop as she might have. She weighed sixty pounds when she died at age 20 on April 13.

Two things particularly moved me about the service. First, Anna was buried in a beautiful casket, handmade, with help, by a friend and member of the church her father pastors. When someone remarked that such a beautiful casket would be put into the ground and decay, he mentioned that Mary was accused of wastefulness when she anointed Jesus’ feet with expensive ointment and wiped them with her hair. The funeral flowers were stunning, and the church full. Anna’s grandfather said it well—she was being buried as a queen. Just so.

What makes a young woman like Anna worthy of reverence? Here we come to the second thing I found so moving. Before and after the service, a slideshow of photos played on a screen in the church. All of them were of Anna in her wheelchair, sometimes alone, but mostly with various members of her family. And in nearly every one of them, she was smiling. For all her suffering and disability, Anna was remarkably content, something Chris mentioned repeatedly when telling his daughter’s story during the service.

Wheelchair bound, unable to speak or even to swallow, Anna’s life was radically constrained: She could do nothing but look to others to provide for her, receiving their love and loving them in return. That’s it. Yet that is exactly what God seeks from us—to be content in the good gifts He has given us, receiving his love and loving Him in return. The Bible calls that worship.

Our culture, on the other hand, knows precious little about how to receive. Rather, we demand. And therefore, we know not of thankfulness, of worship. How many of us in our able-bodied world are in fact stunted because we have never learned to worship, to give thanks to God, and to seek our contentment in Him?

God continues to use what the world deems foolish to shame the wise, and to choose what is considered weak to shame the strong—this so we might learn that the all-so-important things we do, and are able to do, amount to nothing apart from finding contentment in Him. As Anna’s life and death testified, no life is lived to the full without worship, and no life is empty with it. Her (abundantly “pro-life”) funeral was a forceful reminder of this, as we paid our respects to Anna and bid her farewell for a time, a queen to her castle.