It can be breathtaking to see all God is stirring for “the cause of the fatherless” on a broad scale, nationwide and beyond.  But most compelling of all are simply the individual stories of lives touched deeply through choices to open heart and home to orphans.  The truth is, adoption and other ways of loving parentless children echo; even small choices to care for orphans tend to ripple out far beyond the individual child and family.

One such story caught my eye, and my heart, today.  It’s a short post put up this morning on Facebook by Russ Weir.  Late last year, Russ traveled all the way to California from Texas to meet in person and strategize together about how to encourage and grow the orphan movement.  It was a rich time of fellowship and thinking, and I now count Russ a dear friend and true brother-in-arms.  Some of you may know him, too, through his leadership in the Red Letters Campaign.  His simple, poignant words speak for themselves:

In almost every way, today is ordinary. But while driving to work this morning, I realized that today is something particularly special. Four years ago, a sick and broken little 7 year-old girl was grafted into my family through adoption. Today, that little girl is 11 and she leaving me for 2 weeks to go minister to people that she can UNIQUELY relate to – impoverished indians in South Dakota.

This is Zoe in Guatemala when we first met her – she’s wearing the Christmas dress we bought her

For many girls her age, this would simply be another trip, but for Zoe this is so much different – it’s a milestone of restoration for a girl who faced a childhood of neglect, abuse, sickness, extreme poverty, days without food, mass death through natural disaster and child labor. For my Zoe, today begins a pilgrimage back to her sorest place and past. She will wrestle through memories of her pain and the loss of her childhood as she connects with people in similar circumstances. She will face her past head on and her mother and i will not be there with her. She may be too young still to recognize the significance of this or what lies beyond that door, but i am confident that she is now ready to face it.

For me, today i realized a tremendous blessing of adoption. Once again, i’m shown that adoption has little to do with what I can do for my children, but what God shows me through it. In only 4 years, i have watched a resiliant girl overcome untold odds and today, she is restored … not in the way that she doesn’t hurt, but in that the pain and fear that once reflected in her eyes has been replaced with a calm softness. Today, her brokenness is not a weakness … it’s an asset that helps her connect with and minister to other broken people in a way that I cannot.

Zoe with her sisters

It wasn’t an attractive process watching all of the pain that went into her come pouring back out onto us. But today … today … it just hit me that God has succeeded again where the world has failed. A girl with every excuse to harbor bitterness has grown perhaps the softest, most sincere and biggest heart i know. While He put Zoe in our care, He did not leave the job of restoring her to us. Instead, He is restoring US through restoring her. This realization has made an ordinary day quite special.

For all of you who have adopted or will adopt, i hope that this will be your blessing too. Thank you Zoe for this gift. You are a blessing, INDEED!

A Time for Men

It sometimes seems Christian men are ten steps behind the women in responding to God’s call to care for orphans, whether via adoption, foster care or global orphan care.  There’d be a lot to say about reasons why.   But whatever the cause, one thing is clear:  men need to know that when we talk about reflecting God’s heart for the orphan, masculinity is every bit as needed as maternal love.

Yes, to meet an orphan’s needs does call for much nurture and caregiving.   (I might add that any loving father should join and relish these involvements, too.)  But there’s another side to the call as well, a fiercer side.

The word translated “care for” or “visit” in James 1:27 is a much more potent term than we often imagine.  It carries a hint of the same thought as in our colloquial saying “show up”—as in, “…then, the Marines showed up.”   In Luke 1:68 the term is set in the context of God’s mighty rescue His people:  “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel; for He hath visited and redeemed His people” (KJV).  We get a taste of this same call to masculine action in Isaiah’s mandate: “Defend the cause of the fatherless” (1:17).

Ultimately, the wellspring of all our actions on behalf of orphans is God’s action on our behalf:  His role as the rescuing and defending Father, His fierce pursuit and rescue of us.

This kind of active, pursuing, sacrificial, even aggressive “visiting” of orphans is a call to every man who claims the name of Christ.

The truth is, the fatherless child often faces the world without provider or protector; she lives on a precipice between poverty and predators.  Men are needed.  Real men.  As protectors and providers.  As adoptive fathers and mentors.  As defenders and champions.  The role demands struggle; we must grapple in prayer, in sacrifice, in wresting a young life from those that would use and abuse it.  This can be a bloody road, sometimes literally.  And it calls out for men to stand alongside their wives, sisters and daughters to truly “defend the cause of the fatherless.”

There is reason for hope.  Men are waking.  A small, hand-written note was left for me at Summit VI, unsigned.  It read simply, “I know of quite a few women in my hometown who would love to and have a desire to adopt or open their home for fostering children.  Sadly, none of their husbands are open to this in any way.  I’ve wondered, ‘Where are the men with a heart for the fatherless—a heart like my heavenly father.’  This is my first time at the Summit and I am blown away by the number of men here!!  And I am very encouraged.  Just wanted to pass that on.”