Adoption has always held a special space in my heart, and only increased with the adoption of a precious nephew from Romania by my brother and sister-in-law about 30 years ago. Steve and I then tried for 3 years to adopt a sibling group of 5 from Romania, one with special needs. It's a long and complicated story, but while every step of the process seemed blessed by God, we were literally "shut down" by both the American and Romanian Embassies at the last moment. In fact, my only trip to see these kids (known by Steve for several years) was to tell them in person we could not, in fact, make the adoption happen. Steve and I were devastated, but they were okay with the news, having already experienced many disappointments in their young lives.
These precious memories were rekindled this morning as I came across a quote by J.I. Packer in Knowing God. It is perhaps the finest and most encouraging definition of adoption I have personally ever read, and so I wanted to share this with my CandyceLand readers as well. Packer writes:
"Adoption, by its very nature, is an act of free kindness to the person adopted. If you become a father by adopting a child, you do so because you choose to, not because you are bound to. Similarly, God adopts because he chooses to. He had no duty to do so. He need not have done anything about our sins save punish us as we deserve. But he loved us so; he redeemed us, forgave us, took us as his sons and daughters, and gave himself to us as our Father.
"Nor does his grace stop short with that initial act, any more than the love of human parents who adopt stops short with their completing of the legal process that makes the child theirs. The establishing of the child's status as a member of the family is only a beginning. The real task remains: to establish a genuinely filial relationship between your adopted child and yourself. It is this, above all, that you want to see. Accordingly, you set yourself to win the child's love by loving. You seek to excite affection by showing affection. So with God. And throughout our life in this world, and to all eternity beyond, he will constantly be showing us, in one way or another, more and more of his love, and thereby increasing our love to him continually. The prospect before the adopted children of God is an eternity of love."
Candy's final thoughts: My response to this is to increase my prayers to our Heavenly Father, first in gratitude for his adoption of me as a daughter. Secondly, we can all pray for others around us who do not appear (yet?) to know God, that they would, through saving grace, become a part of his family. Finally, the doctrine of adoption reminds me to intercede continually on the behalf of Monica, Ionel, Mihai, Elena, and Vasile, that they too may be adopted by God into an "eternity of love."
Oh what a great topic! My daughter and son in law adopted 3 sibling sisters they have lived with them now 3 years, the first year of life in their home they had to wait for the adoption date to be scheduled, Praise be to God two years ago that process was finally completed with many family members there to welcome these precious little ones into our family, there was a family photo in the court room and there were at least 25 of us including the judge standing with our arms around each other and tears of joy. This is a great picture of what our home coming will be like when we finally arrive in heaven and are greeted by the hundreds of thousands that are our adopted family who have been cheering us on as they look down and watch the difficulties we face in this life.
ReplyDeleteOne of the hardest things for an adopted child (only one there are several) is to learn to trust this new family that they are staying with them for the rest of their lives and all the moving from home to home is done! This too is a reflection of our adoption into heaven, we will be with our Heavenly Father forever, never left again to wander, to be hurt, to be abused we will have complete confidence and trust in our new home living with all the other sons and daughters of adoption in the kingdom of God.
One of my greatest pleasures are the smiles, cries of joy and hugs that greet me when I walk into their home each Friday, there are five girls altogether. I do believe this too is how we will be welcomed when we finally come home. For now the greatest treasure we can give our children is the word of God, I do a bible study with the two oldest girls each Friday and the Lord is always on our tongues when we are together the whole family, He completes the relationship.
Beautiful - thanks for sharing your thoughts with all of us.
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