Mike Gerson, former chief speechwriter to President Bush, has a tremendous column on international adoption in today’s Washington Post.  Mike has a reputation even among critics as not just a master communicator, but also both an incisive analyst of international issues and a devout Christian.  During work-related travel in Zambia, we visited homes of AIDS victims together, and I saw in him a truly Christlike heart of compassion—one not content with just writing about needs, but yearning to address them as well.

The full article is definitely worth the read for anyone who has pondered the ethnicity issues tied up in cross-racial adoption.  Here’s a few highlights:

The relationship [of adoption] results from a broken bond but creates ties as strong as genetics, stronger than race or tribe …

After millennia of racial and ethnic conflict across the world, resulting in rivers of blood, America declared that bloodlines don’t matter, that dignity is found beneath every human disguise. There is no greater embrace of this principle than an American family that looks like the world.

Instead of undermining any culture, international adoption instructs our own. Unlike the thin, quarrelsome multiculturalism of the campus, multiethnic families demonstrate the power of affection over difference. They tend to produce people who may look different from the norm of their community but see themselves as just normal, just human.

Read the whole article here.

Last month marked the half-year anniversary since Haiti’s catastrophic earthquake. Aside from the small uptick in coverage at the milestone, the eyes of the world have largely turned elsewhere: oil leaks, soccer matches, November elections. Of course, this was all but inevitable. The 24-hour news cycle is fueled by “new,” and tales of ongoing struggle, grinding poverty, and a less-than-hoped-for rebuilding are anything but new.

There’s certainly good reason for frustration at the reality every news programmer knows all too well: news consumers rarely remain interested in other people’s tragedy for more than a few months, at most. Such is human nature, as much a testimony to evil in our world as Haiti’s earthquake itself. The truth is, if we tried to sustain concern for every tragedy we’ve ever seen on TV, we’d melt like cheese on a stovetop. So, as the media’s conveyor belt of heartbreaking stories rolls on, we are left making uneasy peace with an emotional journey that looks like an EKG: long stretches of numbed apathy spiked by occasional moments of empathetic sorrow. Is this really the best way to live?

Read the full article on Cardus online.

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!

The last post highlighted the need for men, specifically, to catch up with our stalwart sisters in taking up the cause of the fatherless.  My own father—who embodies for me the blend of gentleness and strength that marks  a man fully committed to Christ—shared with me a song last week that resounds with this theme as well.  It’s clearly from an artist with a vision for men stepping forward as fathers to the fatherless, country singer Randy Travis.

Raise Him Up

When I first met his momma
She was just 19
Couldn’t say for certain who the father was
I have known him since he was a pup
And I’m gonna raise him up

If you never knew your daddy
Like I never knew mine
It feels like everybody knows you’re fatherless
This boy may not be blood of my blood
But I’m gonna raise him up

I’ll provide for him
Walk beside of him
I am strong enough
Cause it’s time he knew
What a son can do
With a father’s love
He can change the world

Ya’ll may have to look at Joseph
A couple thousand years ago
When he held a newborn baby he named Jesus
He said he may not be blood of my blood
Still I’m gonna raise him up

I’ll provide for him
Walk beside of him
I am strong enough
I will show him too
What a son can do
With a fathers love
And he will change the world

33 years later
When the Son was in his grave
Broken and abandoned by a world he came to save
His real Dad said he’s mine
Blood of my blood
And I’m gonna raise him up

I’ll provide for you
Walk beside of you
I am strong enough
I have seen from you
What a son can do
With a fathers love
One man changed the world
And he can change your world
But you gotta raise him up
Raise him up

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.”

When Rachel and I traveled to pick up our adopted daughter, Eden, in Ethiopia, we had the chance to spend time at several orphanages.  One that particularly stuck with me is the Kolfe Orphanage in Addis Ababa, a home for older boys:  its battered building sit in dry, hardpan clay; thin rays of hope came from caring Ethiopians and Americans that worked with the boys, but could not easily erase the aching existence many of the young men knew.

This story shared with me today is of one young man from Kolfe, named Solomon, and a very special couple I met at Summit, Eileen and Jerry Mestas.  It brought a broad smile to my face, and I imagine it will for you as well.    (As a side note, Rachel confessed feeling she was in the presence of a celebrity when she learned that Eileen Mestas was not only a champion of adoption and orphan care, but also had developed the patent for the original “hooter hider” nursing cover, for which many a mother is undyingly grateful.  But that’s another matter…) :

______________________________________________________________

Solomon Bekele is 19 years old and has been living in an orphanage in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia for the last 10 years. He was living without hope or plans for a future and he thought he was forgotten, even by God. He was all alone with not one living relative in this world. The Kolfe Orphanage with boys ranging in ages 7-21 years had not been maintained in over 30 years. The living conditions were tragic, with raw sewage seeping up from the ground, broken windows in all the dorms, and the beds they slept in were trash pile worthy. They only had injera (their national bread) and soup to eat every day, three times a day

Then in November 2007, the Mestas family from Wake Forest, NC traveled to Ethiopia to adopt a sibling group of three. They were taken to visit the Kolfe orphanage and met Solomon. They became pen-pals and miracles began to happen through the letters to Solomon.

Upon returning home from Ethiopia, the Mestas family started speaking all over the country on behalf of orphans and were instrumental, in just 2 months, of raising over $50,000 to renovate the orphanage. Eileen Mestas started posting Solomon’s letters on their family blog www.jobsdaughters.blogspot.com which began spreading around the country like wildfire. How many people get to know a real orphan boy in Africa and hear his cries for help and his heart’s desire to be loved? People from all over the U.S. started to visit Solomon at the Orphanage in Ethiopia, and continue the humanitarian aid efforts. When he was asked how many people had visited him he said; “Too many to count.” In two short years, the Kolfe orphanage has become famous and is being transformed. Solomon has been instrumental in getting several of the younger boys adopted, and many more of them sponsored by American families.

Solomon failed the Ethiopian Government National School Exam in 10th grade and was considered not worthy of further education. He was not permitted to attend any more government schools or University and was destitute with no hope for a future.

The Mestas family started to financially support him going to a private school in Ethiopia where he graduated in August 2009, as Valedictorian! Out of 400 students he was the only orphan. Through a series of miraculous events, Solomon was awarded a full tuition scholarship to attend The College at Southeastern in Wake Forest, NC.

The president of Southeastern, Dr. Danny Akin, agreed to give Solomon a tuition scholarship if he could get to the United States. This was the greatest challenge of all, since the US Embassy normally does not grant student visas to orphans. It is mandatory for all international students to return to their country after they graduate. All students must prove ties to their native country, such as family, property, bank accounts, and other resources. Typically orphans have no ties to ensure their return. The odds were against Solomon again.  The Mestas family elicited the support of several organizations, such as the Gladney Center for Adoption of Fort Worth, Texas, Open Door Baptist Church in Raleigh and others who wrote letters of recommendation in support of Solomon’s application. They also engaged the Office of Senator Kay Hagan, who assisted in the expedition of his VISA approval just yesterday, Monday June 21, 2010!! He received his Visa this morning and is booked on a flight to the USA tonight which arrives at RDU tomorrow, Wednesday, June 23, 2010 at 1:30 p.m.

God performed another miracle for Solomon and he will be living with the Mestas family and joining their speaking ministry for at least the next 4-5 years. Solomon has become the VOICE OF THE ORPHAN!

A crowd of at least 100 people is expected to welcome him at the RDU airport tomorrow.

This past weekend, my parents gave Rachel and me our first overnight away from 8-month old Lincoln.  As much as were missing the lad and his three older sisters, we can’t say it kept us from relishing the time together amidst California’s breathtaking redwood forests.  The quietude also provided a rare chance for extended reading.  I picked up Tom Davis’ Priceless and couldn’t stop ‘til it was done.

The book is a page-turner, no question, in the vein of Clancy or Ludlum.  And despite its relentless pace, the book’s descriptions of Russia and its people are rich.  I’ve spent quite a bit of time in the former Soviet Union, and again and again found myself in the grip of nostalgia, nodding or grinning at the way Davis captured the beauty and quirks of the mystery-shrouded land and its people.

Beyond the sheer pleasure of a good read, however, the significance of the book is far deeper.  It leaves the reader awash not just in knowledge, but in the experience and emotion, of what it means for an orphan to live without provider or protector.  It helps us not only to understand, but to feel, why God calls us to “defend the cause of the fatherless.”

That’s why every movement in response to God’s call for justice requires not only good theology and strategy, but also good art.   As CS Lewis describes it in The Abolition of Man,  our head can only rule our decisions “through the chest [heart].”  That means that as vital as right thinking is, it is ultimately a rightly-formed heart (will, desire, emotion, aspiration, longing) that most impels right action.   (This is why Scripture urges, “Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life”—Proverbs 4:23.)  Good art, from truth-telling stories to music to movies, can powerfully stir and shape our hearts.  It can draw truth from idea to action.  Good art leads a migration from mind to heart, and then from there to hands and feet.

That’s just what Davis sought to do via a can’t-put-it-down thriller in Priceless.   He accomplished his goal marvelously.