Wednesday, December 26, 2007

This is just plain cool.

You've got to read this article.

Here's an excerpt.

Then, around Christmas, a sister told Captain Southworth that Ala'a was getting too big. He would have to move to a government-run facility within a year.

"Best case scenario was that he would stare at a blank wall for the rest of his life," Captain Southworth said.

To this day, he recalls the moment when he resolved that that would not happen.

"I'll adopt him," he said.

Saturday, December 22, 2007

Christmas and Adoption

The good folks over at Carolina Hope Adoption get it. They get the connection between the Gospel and Adoption.

They've written a blog entitled "Don't just celebrate Christmas, celebrate your adoption."

Here's a little excerpt:

If you think about it, what we celebrate during the Christmas season—God sending His Son to redeem us—was for the purpose of giving us adoption as sons. According to Paul, God the Father sent His eternal Son into the world so that we might receive the status of sons and eternally share in the Son’s communion with Him.

I think I might take it one minor step further, saying that all of this was ultimately for God's glory, not our own. But, I doubt that CHA would disagree.

Merry Christmas!

Monday, December 10, 2007

Third Day

Brad Avery (Guitarist for the band Third Day) and his family adopted a child from China this year (2007). Tricia and I went to their concert last night, and they played a song that he wrote about the "experience", called "Merry Christmas." It's on the Christmas Offerings CD. (You can get the CD with the link below. I'd highly recommend the CD anyway. They've written a new verse to "What Child is This." (Unfortunately, I don't have them right in front of me.)

Anyway. Check this stuff out.

Saturday, December 8, 2007

The Brotherhood of Sons

Dr. Russell Moore from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, has a phenomenal article, entitled The Brotherhood of Sons: What Some Rude Questions About Adoption Taught Me About the Gospel of Christ.  It's a good 15 minute commitment to read, but well worth it.  Here's an excerpt:

“They are now,” I replied. “Yes,” the lady snapped, “I know. But are they really brothers?” Clenching my jaw, I coolly responded, “Yes, now they are both our children so they are now really brothers.” The woman sighed, rolled her eyes, and said, “Well, you know what I mean.”

Of course, we did know what she meant. She meant did these two boys—born three weeks apart—share a common biological ancestry, a common bloodline, some common DNA. It struck me that this question betrayed what most of us tend to view as really important when it comes to sonship: traceable genetic material.

This is the reason people would also ask us, “So do you also have any children of your own?” And it is the reason newspaper obituaries will often refer to the deceased’s “adopted child,” as though this were the equivalent of a stepchild or a protégé, rather than a real offspring.

...

I suppose the root of my annoyance with the question “Are they brothers?” really lay here. It seemed that the good-intentioned conversationalists saw these children as somehow not quite part of our family, as though, if they were “really brothers,” then “at least they’ll have each other.” The same is true of other questions people asked us: “Have you ever seen their mother?” (“Why, yes, and you’ve seen her too. Have you met my wife Maria?”) or “Do you worry that their real parents will ever show up?”

Friday, December 7, 2007

Steven Curtis Chapman on The Gospel and Adoption

Steven Curtis Chapman: Adoption takes the Gospel and it makes it real in a profound way that nothing else does…I mean, every time one of the 3 girls run in the room it’s like there’s the Gospel again. There’s a little girl by no merit of her own, by nothing she could do, nothing she did to earn this, only by the miracle of adoption God placed her in our family. Now she has an inheritance, now she has a name, now she has a future, now she has hope where she didn’t have that before. I think my kids see that, I think they get it…It’s been so amazing to watch especially my sons…watching my boys, have little sisters, who not only are little sisters but are little sisters who they’ve seen go from helplessness…just to watch them relate to them, watch them be big brothers to these little sisters. I’ve watched them blossom and become so much better men as a result of it. It’s so cool to hear them talk about what their families are going to look like one day. “I want to have one from India, one from Africa, one from China”. They’re formulating these rainbow families, of all colors. It’s so exciting for me as a Dad…It’s opened their hearts and it’s opened their eyes to the Gospel, to the Big Story of God…all over the world and not just our little picture we get of it in our culture.


(HT: Rightnow.org)