Last night an older gentlemen at church cornered me and asked, “How much does it cost to adopt from Ethiopia?”  When I answered the question, the man looked as if he would literally pass out.  He then acted amazed that anyone could actually do it.

I began thinking about the reality that no one acts so shocked when they find out how much we pay for our cars and houses. And yet, the cost of an adoption is a cost for which we have no context to consider.

It’s true that one of the very first questions folks have to ask when considering adoption is, “How much does it cost?”  The issue of finances is probably the biggest obstacle families face when adopting. Most families will spend the majority of the process raising funds, while trying to figure out how to pay pressing fees.  Obviously, families who want to adopt will have to consider the financial cost.  But, is there a far greater cost we are all failing to consider?

The sad reality is that there are many couples choosing not to adopt because they feel the money just isn’t available.  There are others who are refusing to help support them because it feels irrelevant, even when it comes to the enterprise of kingdom investments.  Meanwhile, we all seem to be thinking hard about how to squeeze enough money out of our monthly budgets for fast food and new cell phone apps.

When it comes to caring for orphaned children around the world, the cost is far greater than anything we could ever imagine.  Whether you are the face of love for a child without a family or you help give so some else can be, the issue is not the money.  The issue is obeying Jesus. The cost is one of ignoring Him and His brothers and sisters who presently languish in abandonment.

Jesus gives us a breakdown of the price paid for this in Matthew 25:41-46

“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?’ Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

May we be more shocked by what it will cost us to ignore Jesus than what it cost to adopt one of the least of these!

I just finished watching this really insightful documentary about transracial adoption. Although it is done from a domestic adoption perspective, I think there are many issues and challenges that you’ll find will overlap with children coming home from Ethiopia (and their adoptive families). Families would be well served to watch this 55 minute video and hear from a transracial adoptee about his experience, what his parents did well, and what he wished would had been different. Hope you enjoy it!

Click here to watch the  video.

“No, your eyes were not playing tricks on you when you read the title of this post. Orphan care is not what I do. It is what Jesus does. Here is what I mean (are you ready for a quick mind-bending journey?): too often we Christians think primarily in terms of what we do for the kingdom rather than primarily in terms of what Jesus does. Did you notice that I used the word “primarily” and not “only”? Very few Christians think only in these terms, but most of us are daily tempted to think primarily in these terms.”

I highly recommend reading his series.  Read Part 1, 2, and 3

By now, you’ve likely either seen the movie “The Blind Side”, or you at least have it on your must-watch list.  Released in Fall 2009, the movie tells the story of the Tuohy family, a well-to-do Christian family in Memphis, Tennessee, who took in and adopted a homeless, traumatized teenage boy named Michael Oher.  With the love of his new family and the help of others, Michael went on to football stardom at the University of Mississippi and eventually the NFL.

On today’s FamilyLife Today broadcast, hosts Dennis Rainey and Bob Lepine interview Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy in the first of a three part series airing through Friday.

In part one, called Sharing the Power of Cheerful Giving, Sean and Leigh Anne talk about their childhoods and their early marriage and discuss how God has used their experiences to make them the people they are today.  They talk about how God wants to use us to bless others, which is simply what they did with their son, Michael, in giving him an opportunity to blossom into the person that God created him to be.

To listen to the broadcast, and to read the entire transcript, click here.

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.”

Watch the interview here

HT:  Spirit of Adoption

Unwanted infants in ancient Rome were often disposed of via the practice of “exposing.”  Whether undesirable because it was malformed, female or simply inconvenient, the child would be left alone, outside the city walls, without defense before glaring sun, icy winds or roving animals.

In 374 AD, the Christian emperor Valentinian banned the practice.  But for centuries prior, a marginalized group gained a reputation for rescuing these children:  Christians.  The early church was known, even among many who despised it, as a people who defended the orphan.  Believers went outside the city to find infants abandoned there, taking them in, and often raising them as their own.  This witness was one powerful factor in the vibrant life and growth of Christianity in its first 300 years, and at other high points in history as well.  It can be that way again.

Last month, 1,200 Christian orphan advocates from across America and beyond gathered in Minneapolis.  At moments, the ethos and interactions felt almost electric.  As one band leader expressed, “It felt like that was the first time I’d been worshipping and every person in the room was really a Christian.”   I understood what he meant.  From families with adopted HIV+ children, to foster parents, to individuals serving the fatherless around the globe, the spirit of that community carried the feel of the early days after Pentecost.  As best I can discern, here are four key reasons why:

Caring for orphans reflects the heart of God.  From Isaiah’s call to “defend the cause of the fatherless” (1:17) to James’ placement of orphan care at the heart of “pure and undefiled religion” (1:27), the biblical mandate is clear.   But this is not merely God’s expectation of us; it is a mirroring of His own character.  “He defends the fatherless,” declares Deuteronomy 10:18.  Describes the Psalmist, “He places the lonely in families.”  To be like our heavenly Father, we’re invited to do the same.

Caring for orphans makes the Gospel visible.  At the heart of the Christian story is the God who pursued us when we were destitute and alone.  He adopted us as His children, and invites us to live as His sons and daughters.  Perhaps nothing makes this truth more tangible than when Christians follow in their Father’s footsteps, opening heart and home in unconditional affection to the child that has no claim upon them but love.

Caring for orphans defies the gods of our age.  Darwinism’s sole ethical imperative is to ensure one’s own genetic material carries forward.  So like Gideon tearing down his father’s idols (Judges 6), we assault this dictate when we seek to ensure the survival, and thriving, of a child that does not share our genes.  Meanwhile, the purposeful sacrifices required to love this child flout the demands of other gods also, from materialism to self-actualization to comfort.  The cost must be counted.  But—compared to the depth and richness found along the path of caring for orphans—these false gods are shown to be as lifeless and unsatisfying as statues of bronze or wood.

Caring for orphans invites a journey of discipleship.  “I see these kids changed,” explained a woman who helps Christians get involved with foster care, “But I think the parents are changed even more.”  It’s true.  Every family I know that’s opened themselves to parentless children has not gone unaltered.  And though the road can be hard, even painful, virtually always it leads closer to Jesus.  Expressed one adoptive mom recently, “People have said, ‘Oh, aren’t they lucky, you rescued them from whatever.’  And I think, Are you kidding?  I’m the lucky one.  I get to be their mom.  And I get to be daily rescued from my selfishness, and my impatience, and things that are just as disease-ridden in my soul.”

Ultimately, here’s the result I see again and again:  love for orphans transforms.   It transforms children as they experience love and nurture they’ve come to live without.  It transforms individual Christians, as we encounter Jesus deeply and personally in a destitute child.  It transforms the broader community of believers as well, pulling us corporately beyond a religion of self-development to a costly-but-muscular faith.  Finally, love for orphans transforms a watching world, as it sees—perhaps for the first time—the Gospel embodied.

Close friends from Washington, DC, Tom and Leah, adopted a little boy from an African nation two years ago.  He’d been found, abandoned, at the edge of a forest, umbilical cord still attached.  “He was left for the hyena,” described the old woman who discovered him when the newborn’s cry startled her milk cow.

When I heard that story, I couldn’t help thinking of the early Christians, going outside the city walls to take in abandoned infants.  I feel the same about what’s going on in Colorado, where so many Christians have adopted from the foster system that the number of children waiting for adoption has been cut from nearly 800 in 2008 to just 365 today.  The same goes for countless partnerships between U.S. Christians and churches abroad to care for orphans within their home countries as well.

Christians are again becoming known as a people who defend the cause of the fatherless.  As we do, the world won’t be left unchanged.  Neither will we.

HT:  Together for Adoption

To be in God’s family is to be part of a cosmic story that God is writing for our sakes, his glory, and the good of all creation. Ever since the fall, mankind has succumbed to the unrelenting temptation to write, control, and star in our own story (consider these verses). I know that I am tempted every day to write my own story for my sake, my glory, and my good. As Martin Luther used to say, left to myself I am forever “turned in upon myself” (homo incurvatus in se).  Apart from God’s gracious and decisive intervention, this is my (our) house of bondage.

But the good news of the gospel is that the Son of God became man, entering into our house of bondage, in order to deliver us out of it into God’s story of freedom and renewal. Jesus entered into our house of bondage, becoming a curse for us, that he might bring us into the house of his Father—and bring us he did!

You may be wondering what this has to do with caring for orphans and widows in their affliction. Well, it really has everything to do it. If we are not renewed each day by what Jesus has done on our behalf and for our sakes, we won’t be very committed to caring for orphans, at least over the long haul and for the right reasons.

People who are homo incurvatus in se are much more concerned about their own stories than they are about God’s story, which happens to be very much concerned with the plight of the orphan. To be in God’s family is to be part of a cosmic story that is being written by God for our sakes, his glory, and the good of all creation, which includes the good of orphans.

So let’s together commit to daily rehearse and rejoice in the good news of the gospel for God’s glory, our good, and the good of orphans all around the world.

I was sitting at my computer on Saturday morning when I heard Grant, my eight year-old, yelling at his little brother – something about “why did you take that . . .” As I rounded the corner to see what was going on, Grant ran into me. I knelt down and asked what was wrong. “He took it from me,” he said – and then let out a short, loud scream of frustration. “I’m just so mad at him. Why did you even have to adopt him anyway?”

Wow!  Where did that come from?  Gathering my thoughts, I decided to seize the opportunity and have a little adoption chat.  After all, that’s a pretty important question.  I didn’t want to pass up an opportunity to answer.

“That’s a good question,” I said. 

“I mean you already had two boys,” he said, referring to himself and his older brother, both of whom we adopted as infants, “so why did you have to adopt him too?”

I plopped Grant onto my lap. He started to calm down. “I could ask the same question about you too – why did mom and I have to adopt you?”  After all, we already had one little boy when you came along.  So why do you think we adopted you?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Grant replied, a wry smile creeping across his face. 

“Well, do you think we were just sitting around and I said to mom ‘I’m bored, we should make some homemade ice cream.’ And then she replied, ‘I have a better idea, let’s adopt another little boy.’  Do you think that’s how we decided to adopt you?”

He laughed, “No.”

I continued.  “Tell you what, I’ll give you several choices – like a multiple choice test – and you pick the right answer as to why you think we adopted you.  That will probably also help to answer why we adopted your little brother.”

“To start, you asked me ‘why’ but mom and I asked a different question when we found out about each of you – we asked ‘why not?’ So choice ‘A’ is ‘why not.’  Choice ‘B’ is because we had love in our hearts to give.  Choice ‘C’ is because . . .” 

“Because you knew of a child who needed a forever family,” he said.

“Right,” I said looking impressed at his addition to my list.  “Choice ‘D’ is because we prayed and believed it was the right thing to do.  Choice ‘E’ is because we had . . .”

“. . . You had room in your house,” he said, smiling and satisfied.  He continued, “And choice ‘F’ is because you didn’t want to have to make ice cream.”

I chuckled.  “And choice ‘G’ is ‘All of the above,” I said.  “So which is it?  Why did we adopt you – and your brothers and your sister?”

“G – all of the above,” Grant said.

“That’s right – all of the above,” I said, and our conversation continued a bit longer.

As my kids get older they understand that adoption is complex.  There is no simple answer to most of their questions, but they know that they are not an accident and neither is our family.  We were designed and woven together with love by the One who first loved us.