Orphan Sunday

Today is Orphan Sunday.
Today means more to us than any of the other Orphan Sundays that came before, because we have a little boy of our own waiting for us in an orphanage across the ocean.
But the orphan crisis SHOULD have meant MUCH more to us than it did before we began this journey to adopt Toby. Yes, we had a heart for orphans. We worked at Boys Town, we supported adoptions within our family, we gave to Reece's Rainbow's Angel Tree Program.
But we also made excuses. Not everyone is called to adopt, right? There are other ways to support orphans. Yes, true. But as followers of Christ, we cannot sit by and watch the orphan epidemic play out before our eyes and NOT RISE UP TO DO SOMETHING. Just saying it is so sad and we will pray is not enough.
There are ways to support mothers who are faced with unwanted pregnancies. You can provide respite care or other help to foster families. You can sponsor orphans or donate to adoption funds.
And you can adopt.
Adoption is a scary thing. It is full of unknowns. How will this affect our three youngest boys? How will the dynamic of our family change? What if there are issues that we know nothing about right now?
Tom Davis - author of Fields of the Fatherless and an adoptive dad himself said:
"How do we overcome fear? We start by making others' pain a priority in our lives. People are eternal; fear is not. We change our lifestyles and start to give sacrificially of our time, energy, and resources to the fatherless. And then we do something daring to experience the JOY and BLESSING of loving the poor."
Yes! It is not easy to open your heart wide to the pain of others. It is more comfortable to protect it from feeling pain. But on this Orphan Sunday, I pray that more and more of you will learn to make others' pain a priority. That more and more of you will realize the truth of what Francis Chan has said - that we as Christians can assume that we are ALL called to adopt, unless we hear God clearly say no.
Next year at this time, we will be posting a picture of our sweet boy, orphan no more, surrounded by the loving family he has waited so long to have. But that will not be the end of our orphan journey. I can already tell you that we will never again sit on the sidelines or be voiceless when there are so many orphans left in the world. So many other "Tobys" out there waiting for a family.

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