.Family.

Eighteen years ago, President Clinton declared November to be "National Adoption/Orphan Awareness Month". Eighteen years ago I was on the brink of turning 16. I was consumed with me. This continued for so many years. The only orphan I knew anything about was "Orphan Annie", and adoption was something risky that people who could not have "their own" children did. It was kind of weird, and it was for those crazy people. In all my years growing up in a legalistic Baptist church, and then attending a Bible college, I never once heard someone from the pulpit preach or teach on our mandate to care for orphans.

And I certainly did not investigate it myself.

What shocks me the most now, is that adoption was not even really mentioned in relation to the gospel, and it is such an important piece of the gospel. If it was mentioned, it was quickly glossed over with words like "spirit of adoption" and tied up in theological mumbo-jumbo, and then it was on to the next subject. It was never personalized. It was never intimate.

But WE were orphans, and God, through His beloved Son Jesus' sacrificial death on the cross - in our place, adopted us and made us His children. He eradicated our orphan status. He brought us into His family as His own, and we share all of the same blessings as His beloved Son, Jesus. We are no longer outcasts, we are no longer fatherless!

Read it again. How amazingly beautiful is this? And THIS is adoption. This is why we adopt. This is why we care for orphans - because God first cared for us and our heart is overflowing and bursting with that love - in a way that wants to physically express it. THIS is why I believe God calls so many believers to adopt. It really has less to do with the orphan and their need, and more to do with God gifting us with a breath-taking picture of the gospel. It is more about what happens inside of us when we say "yes". I have not experienced anything more beautiful than this tangible portrait of the gospel living and breathing inside of my own home.

And I could have missed it.

Because adoption was not my choice. Adoption is not something I ever planned to walk through. But, oh how God breaks down barriers, and lies, and preconcieved notions, and life plans, and how He replaces them with His ways, His vision, His love, and His plans.

I know that adoption is not God's plan for every Christian family. However, I also know that His plan is for every Christian family to care for the orphan in a personal, intimate way. We do not all need to make orphans sons and daughters, and bring them into our homes, but we do all need to do something.

Orphan care is not a fad. It is a mandate. Go ahead read your Bible, search out our responsibility to orphans. If we believe in Jesus Christ, we do not have an option to care for the orphan, but we do have an option in how we care for them.

Let's stop debating if we are called. Let's step up to the call, and please, let's support and encourage one another in the process.

Because if you are a believer, and I am a believer, we are all adopted into the same family, with the same Father. It's time to start acting like a family. I am weary of the Church functioning as an orphanage - broken, destitute, cold -  rather than a family. A family filled with the HOPE of Jesus.

Please join me on your knees for the millions of children around our globe that lay their head down tonight without the love of a daddy or a mommy. This is a reality that should haunt us. Let's get busy for these precious children, created in the image of God.

Let's have hard conversations about family reunification and family preservation. Let's talk about orphan prevention first and then orphan care. Let's advocate for ethical adoptions, but only when the previous attempts have been exhausted.

And friends, let's remember the reason we do any of this, the reason we love, is because we are loved. In the center of all of this is Jesus. Let's move forward without losing sight of His face.

Adoption is not just about couples who want children - or who want more children. Adoption is about an entire culture within our churches, a culture that sees adoption as part of our Great Commission mandate and as a sign of the gospel itself... I want to ask what it would mean if our churches and families were known as the people who adopt babies - and toddlers, and children, and teenagers. What if we as Christians were known, once again, as the people who take in orphans and make of them beloved sons and daughters?


No one wants parents who adopt children out of the same sense of duty with which they may give to the building fund for the new church gymnasium. But all of us have a stake in the adoption issue, because Jesus does. He is the one who tells us His Father is also "Father of the fatherless" (Psalm 68:5). And, He is the one who insists on calling "the least of these" His "brothers" (Matthew 25:40) and who tells us that the first time we hear His voice, He will be asking us if we did the same.
 ~ Russell D. Moore