Where My Heart Is

For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, "Abba! Father!" - Romans 8:15

Several years ago I watched a program during the Christmas season that profiled orphans in the US and their desire to find a family. Orphans? Most children who lose their parents are taken in by family members. Right? I mean, that's what my family would do for my four if something were to happen to me.

But something in my heart was pricked by the situation. I went onto the internet and started to search for them, these children with no parents, no family. And amazingly, there they were. Over the next year I found myself drawn to websites with photolistings of orphans all over the world: Nicaragua, Russia, Brazil, Ukraine, China. Hardly a day went by that I didn't search for them online. And there are thousands, hundreds of thousands of them. Infants to teenagers with no one and nothing in this world. Each photolisting included a small picture and blurb about them: abandoned at birth, makes caretakers smile, a favorite in the orphanage, found in the streets. I tried to imagine my Joshua in this situation. I tried to picture him going to sleep each night in a room full of other children. Whose bed would he crawl into if he had a nightmare? Who would hold him and speak to him? How would he learn how to be a dad, a father? Unfathomable.

But what could I do? I showed them to Robert who was moved by their situation as well. Hardly a day has gone by that I haven't visited a website and tried to point out a sweet face to him. He can't bear to look at them though. It makes him incredibly sad. He would say, "Let's go get them." I thought he was joking and then I realized that maybe that was a possibility.

Yes, we have four beautiful children. There isn't a hole in our family; we don't feel incomplete. But maybe this wasn't about us. Maybe this was about someone else. Why not? Wasn't that what Christ had done for me? Hadn't He taken me when I was fatherless and pitiful and brought me into the family of God. And then I saw it all as it should be. I understood the verses about the spirit of adoption and justice for the orphan, and pure religion. I felt an urgency from that point on. Somewhere in the world there was a child in an orphanage that was meant to be part of our family. Who? Where? I had no idea. More importantly, how? That's the question I am working through even at this moment. In the process I have learned patience and trust in God. He has given us stories of families that have walked this path and have claimed a lost child in His name. So we wait and watch.

So here we are . . .

“Weigh'st thy words before thou givest them breath”
-Shakespeare's Othello

I haven't understood the whole "blog" thing. Exactly why would someone want to post an online journal? Isn't that like leaving a locking diary with the key in it? Or maybe people just don't post their most personal thoughts in this type of forum. What's the point then? Is it just another way to talk to hear yourself talking?

Yet here I am.

Curisoity got the best of me. So what good could I use this for? Surely no one cares to know what I'm thinking about the guy driving in front of me today or the paper pile on my desk that never diminishes. Like the widow in I King's who never runs out of oil or bread after using the last of her supplies to cook for Elijah. I think her situation was supposed to be a blessing though. sigh. See that? I just sighed. I'll do that a lot I'm sure.