(Belarus, December 2010)
Here is what I know: I was once a stranger outside the covenants of promise (Ephesians 2:12). I was once without God and without hope in this world. But God brought me near by the blood of Jesus and placed me in his household (Ephesians 2:13). That’s not all: not only has God placed us in His household as His dear children, He’s also going to give us a restored creation as our home! That means that our eternal home will be a renewed earth where God’s presence is known and enjoyed and where there is no more suffering, no more distress, no more affliction!
If there is a people on the face of the earth who should be passionate about caring for orphans in their affliction, it is those whom God has visited in their own misery. He has given us a remarkable gift by sending his own Son into the world to redeem us that we might receive adoption as sons (and everything else that comes with it). If there is anyone who should care for orphans in their affliction, it will be God’s children, God’s sons through adoption.
What God calls us to do, therefore, is to know what it means to be brought into His family through adoption, to understand afresh that our Father is a Father of the fatherless (Psalm 68:5), and then to move out in mission to visit orphans in their distress. Certainly, if any group of people would joyfully give themselves to care for orphans, it would be those whom God has adopted.
Some of us are called to adopt children ourselves, others to come alongside adoptive families in different ways, and still others to care for orphans by supplying their physical needs in hope that there will be families who will bring them in.
-Dan Cruver, Together for Adoption