The Glory of Our Adoption by God

The most recent update is not much of an update. :-)  Now that we have entered the waiting  period of being on the list, there isn't as much to update on.  But we do want to continue to write every week sharing what's on our hearts and how we are doing.  We also hope to encourage others who might be considering adoption with what God has done for us, has taught us, and continues to do and teach us along this journey.  

Today, we want to share a number of great quotes on adoption from the book  Reclaiming Adoption, put together by Dan Curver:

Paul teaches that God does not merely redeem us -- through adoption he brings us into the warmth, love, and gladness of his own family.  Redemption was never intended to be God's "be-all and end-all" work of grace.  God redeemed in his His Son so that he might love us and delight in us even as he loves and delights in his eternal Son.  As we shall see, adoption is God's act of making room within his triune love for prodigals who are without hope, and providing them with homes in this world and the world to come.  This is the story of adoption. 

(p. 14)

From God's perspective, adoption is not essentially about orphans at all.  It is essentially about estrangement.  Adoption is about God taking into his home those who have rebelled  against him.  All humanity is naturally estranged from God.  We are all rebels, all disobedient sons, for we are all made in his image and created to worship him, yet we have rejected him -- as did Adam, as did Israel.  Adoption is about the reconciliation of the rebellious.  Our confusion comes when we look at human adoption and end up focusing on the fact that a child needs parents.  God focuses on the fact that a lost person needs saving... The ultimate purpose of human adoption by Christians, therefore, is not to give orphans parents, as important as that is.  It is to place them in a Christian home that they might be positioned to receive the gospel, so that within that family, the world might witness a representation of God taking in and genuinely loving the helpless, the hopeless, and the despised.

(p.14-15)

The glory of our adoption by God is that it gives us the only object of affection (God) that provides rest, satisfies the longing heart, and makes the impoverished unimaginably rich, even in our soul's darkest nights.  In other words, adoption gives our restless and fearful hearts the all-satisfying love of the triune God.

(p.21)

Please continue to pray for us, as we seek to trust God in His angood timing to bring our child's referral to us so that we can then plan to go over to Ethiopia to meet him!