Are we getting it?

Well it has been a little more than a month since our last post and not much has changed in regards to our adoption plans. Last time we spoke with St. Mary's, we were told we should hear something around the end of the month in regards to being on the official waiting list. That news will hopefully arrive within the next couple of weeks. The next step for us will be to update our home study to include our 5 month old daughter. This should not be a lengthy process like the original home study by any means.

Since writing last, a lot has happened in our church body with adoptions. We have friends that returned from adopting their second child from down south. They have adopted both locally and internationally. We got news that another couple from our church is in the process of adopting a child from Kentucky and that another family in our Sunday school class is adopting a child from Korea. They are completing their basketball team. They have 4 biological kids already and are adopting now to complete the team as well as to fill every seat belt in their van.

As a church body, are we beginning to get it?

Orphan Sunday is coming up on the 7th of November. A few families touched by adoption are making a presentation to the church. When the adoptions first began to happen a couple years ago, there was some resistance from some church members. Unbelievable, but true. It was the same resistance we get when we have done foreign mission work.  As more and more adoptions have started to occur, there is less and less resistance. The church is offering financial support to families. People are bonding together to help out expecting families with gifts and baby showers.  Even some of the members that offered their resistance vocally have now offered their financial support individually.

What has changed?  We are still the same body of believers.  There has been an awesome series of challenges from our interim pastor.  He gets it.  He has said that one of his regrets is that he and his wife did not have more kids.  He would tell you that he is not living for God, but with God daily.  He preaches all the time about the rules, regulations, rituals, and requirements that Christians get so hung up on that we miss out on the blessings waiting for us by simply being with Jesus daily. 

Are we as a church body moving away from our traditional way of thinking?  Are we understanding that Jesus was not a southern Baptist, was not a white guy, didn't speak English, and that's okay?  Are we understanding that Jesus did not spend a lot of time in the church building, but he was the church and went out to the people and spent time with the sinners.  He did not just sit in church and wonder how he could get lost people to come in and get saved.  Our church is slowly moving in that direction.  We are building small groups, getting out of the building and taking the church to people in the community. We are being the church instead of going to the church. 

Are we all realizing that if we call ourselves a Christian that we have been adopted into the family of God.  We were once an orphan, hopeless, destitute, without a forever family, without a bright future.  God takes us into his family, cleans us up, gives us hope, a family and changes our eternal future.

And anyone who welcomes a little child like this on my behalf is welcoming me.  Matthew 18:5

Learn to do good. Seek justice. Help the oppressed. Defend the cause of orphans. Fight for the rights of widows.  Isaiah 1:17

Do you welcome?  Seek?  Help?  Defend?  Fight?  What are you doing?  What will you do?