Loving Like the Father

Boxes, books, and papers lay piled up in dark corners of bedroom, some not having been moved since being put there almost six years previous. Others, if moved at all, have mostly lived a life of shuffling around from one niche to another without a moments glance as to the content. Time has been a luxury these last 6 years. No one ever said parenting was easy. We found out why. Since adopting both boys simultanously from Russia, parenting has been full of highs and lows. Many were exhilarating days, standing on the top of this mountain just inches away from God's breath. Other days, sometimes weeks at a time, would just continue to spiral downwards...

But God provided encouragement and progress in small steps over the years. He always knew when each inch, painstakingly taken, would eventually turn into a mile.

Title of  book catches eye.

I remember this... one of Grandma's treasures given victoriously after successful thrift store hunt a few years ago. An old book, she considered a "real find". Something she thought could be shared someday with the boys. It contained beautiful photographs of families brought together through adoption, with captions celebrating reasons for...Why I Chose You. 

Slowly picking up book, eyes rest on photos of smiling, happy families...gleeful newlyweds, husbands and wives in second decade of marriage, single women, couples with eight children, couples with a child in the womb...all joyfully commiting to decision to bring a child, or children into their home, who had no home before.

Reality many times tells a different story. Adoption can be messy. Many families brought together through adoption are daily reminded of condition that afflicts us all. Brokenness. The history of abuse, abandonment, rejection, neglect, loss and grief, in varying ways and to varying degrees, often is a part of the adoption journey calling for a lifelong commitment from adoptive families to help their children heal.

But these ashes can be traded in for beauty....

We are all born spiritual orphans. Apart from Jesus Christ we too are abandoned, found in squalor, rejected, stricken with a fatal disease called sin. We have no family, no father, no future. we are broken and... messy.

We all need God’s unconditional love...

But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.
                    ~Galatians 4:4–5

Behold! What manner of love the Father has for us, that we should be called the children of God. And that is what we are!
                    ~1 John 3:1-2

 God adopts us out of free love, not because our character and record show us worthy to bear His name, but despite the fact that they show the very opposite. We are not fit for a place in God’s family; the idea of His loving and exalting us sinners as He loves and has exalted the Lord Jesus sounds ludicrous and wild — yet that, and nothing less than that, is what our adoption means.
                      ~ J.I. Packer

Realization sinks in as text becomes clear. Captions with pictures speak... for I too am chosen.

~I chose you because we were meant to be together.

~I chose you because I wanted to wipe away your tears.

~I chose you so you could be comforted in times of need.

~I chose you so I could teach you what you need to know.

~I chose you to help you become the best person you could become.

~I chose you so you could become a help to others.

~I chose you to bring joy to the empty places of your heart.

  ...I chose you because I wanted to show you love without limits.

But God’s choice of us is utterly and eternally different. He didn’t make us His children because we were prettier than others. Divine adoption isn’t concerned with physical health or financial wealth or potential or a person’s past history. God loves the unlovely and unappealing. God loves because God loves.

                  ~Sam Storms

We have been created in God’s image and are being restored to that image because of the redemptive work of the Son of God. We, as God’s children, are privileged to be able to love like our Father. The decision to adopt a child is a replication of our Father’s love for us.

What a great blessing to seek out a child, whose life is charted for misery, and to bring that child into the warmth, security, and discipline of a Christian home. What a privilege to intervene – to reverse inevitable circumstances of abuse, neglect, or worse – and to transfer a child from darkness to light. What a clear picture of God’s adoptive grace to us: to propel our own adopted child on the pathway of holiness, to bring blessing to our own heavenly Father!

                     ~Dr. Dave Garner

Father of Love. Here on your earth, adoptive love, is unspeakably special. But the sacrifice and passion, though beautiful and wonderful, pales before the brilliant light of your love for us; we who  once were spiritual orphans.

Father, thank you for your many reasons for choosing me. Help me to love my children the way You love me...

Adoption is a wonderful metaphor for God’s gracious relations toward us and more than a metaphor, it is a fact of the Christian faith.

                       ~Russell Moore

Always Seeking Higher Ground,

Nora