Adoption: More Than You Think It Is

Even as we are anticipating our third child, I still look forward to the day where, Lord willing, we can adopt a fourth child. I just began reading through Russell Moore's Adopted For Life: The Priority of Adoption for Christian Families & Churches.

Just wanted to share a couple of excerpts.

On why there is such an attack on babies throughout history, Moore writes:

"The demonic powers hate these babies because they hate Jesus. When they destroy 'the least of these', the most vulnerable among us, they're destroying a picture of Jesus himself, of the child delivered by the woman who crushes their head (Gen. 3:15). They know the human race is saved--and they've vanquished--by a woman giving birth (Gal. 4:4; 1 Tim. 2:15). They are grinding apart Jesus' brothers and sisters (Matt. 25:40). They are also destroying the very picture of newness of life and of dependent trust that characterizes life in the kingdom of Christ. (Matt. 18:14). Children also mean blessing---a perfect target of those who seek only to kill and destroy (John 10:10)"

The protection of children isn't charity. It isn't part of a political program fitting somewhere between tax cuts and gun rights or between carbon emission caps and a national service corps. It's spiritual warfare."

Possibly the most powerful paragraph or two I have ever read on adoption and orphan care:

"Think of the plight of the orphan somewhere right now out there in the world. It's not just that she's lonely. It's that she has no inheritance, no future. With every passing year, she's less 'cute,' less adoptable. In just a few years, on her eighteenth birthday, she'll be expelled from the orphanage or from the 'system.' What will happen to her then? Maybe she'll join the military or find some job training. Maybe she'll stare at a tile on the ceiling above her as her body is violated by a man who's willing to pay her enough to eat for a day, alone in a back alley or in front of a camera crew of strangers. Maybe she'll place a revolver in her mouth or tie a rope around her neck, knowing no one will have to deal with her except, once again, the bureaucratic 'authorities' who can clean up the mess she leaves behind. Can you feel the force of such desperation? Jesus can. She's his little sister.

What if a mighty battalion of Christian parents would open their hearts and their homes to unwanted infants--infants some so-called 'clinics' would like to see carried out with the medical waste? It might mean that the next Christmas there'll be one more stocking at the chimney at your house--a new son or daughter who escaped the abortionist's knife or the orphanage's grip to find at your knee the grace of a carpenter's Son.

Planned Parenthood thinks 'Choice on Earth' is the message of Christmas, and perhaps it is in a Christmas culture more identified with shopping malls than with churches. But we know better, or at least we should. Let's follow in the footsteps of the other man at the manger, the quiet one. And as we read the proclamation of the shepherds, exploding in the sky as a declaration of war, let's remind a miserable generation there are some things more joyous than choice--things like peace and life and love."

This need and this command to care for orphans is a part of the Great Commission Christ has given the Church. Let us think about these words and this need the next time we are tempted to purchase a car that is nicer than what we need or live in a house that is bigger and more beautiful than we need.