Adopted
All praise to God, the Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly
realms because we are united with Christ. Even before he made the world, God
loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. God decided in advance to
adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ.
This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure. (Eph. 1:3-5)
Between 1854 and
1929, about two hundred thousand orphans and abandoned children in eastern
cities were placed on westbound trains and shipped across the United States in
search of homes and families. Many of the children had lost their parents through
epidemic. Others were children of down-on-their-luck immigrants. Some were
orphaned by the Civil War. But they all needed homes. Loaded on trains in
groups of thirty to forty, they stopped in rural areas for viewings. The
children were lined on the platform like livestock at a County Fair. Potential
parents asked questions, evaluated health, and even examined teeth. If
selected, the children went to their homes. If not, they got back on the train.
The Orphan Train. Lee Nailling remembers the experience.
He had been
living at the Jefferson County Orphan Home for two years when he, as an
eight-year-old, was taken with his two younger brothers to a train station in
New York City. The day before, his biological father had handed him a pink
envelope that bore the father's name and address. He told the boy to write him
as soon as he reached his destination. The boy placed the envelope in his coat
pocket so no one would take it. The train embarked for Texas, and Lee and his
brothers soon fell asleep. When Lee awoke, the pink envelope was gone; he never
saw it again. I'd love to tell you that Lee's father found him. That the man,
unwilling to pass another second without his sons, sold every possession he
owned so that he could reunite his family. I'd love to describe the moment when
Lee heard his father say, "Son, it's me! I came for you." Lee’s
biography, unfortunately, contains no such an event. But yours does.
Long ago, “… even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to
be holy and without fault in his eyes. God decided in
advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus
Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure. (Eph. 1:4-5) There’s something in you
that God loves. Not just appreciates, but loves. You cause his eyes to widen,
his heart to beat faster. He loves you. And he accepts you. Don't we all want to
know that? Jacob did.
The Old
Testament relates the story of this cunning, slippery, sly soul who was not
beyond pulling the wool over his father's eyes to advance his own agenda. He
spent his early years collecting wives, money and livestock the way some men
today collect wives, money and cars. But Jacob grew restless. By midlife he had
an ache in his heart that caravans and concubines couldn't comfort, so he
loaded up his family and struck out for his home country. He was only a short
jaunt from the Promised Land when he pitched a tent near the Jabbok River and
told the family to go on without him. He needed to be alone. With his fears?
Perhaps. Maybe to gather his courage. Or with his thoughts? Possibly. A break
from the kids and camels would be nice. We aren't told why he went to the
river.
But we are told
about a "Man [who] wrestled with him until the breaking of day."
(Gen. 32:24) Yes, "Man" with a capital “M.” This was no common man.
Out of the dark he pounced. Through the night the two fought, flopping and
plopping in Jabbok's mud. At one point Jacob had the best of the Man until the
Man decided to settle the matter once and for all. With a deft jab to the hip,
he left Jacob writhing like a gored matador. The jolt cleared Jacob's vision,
and he realized, “I'm tangling with God.” He grabbed hold of the Man and held
on for dear life. "I will not let You go unless You bless me!" he
insisted. (v. 26) What does that mean? God in the mud? A tooth-and-nail fight
to the finish? Jacob clinging, and then limping? Sounds more like a bar brawl
than a Bible story.
But the blessing
request? I get that part. Distill it down to today’s language, and Jacob was
asking, "God, do I matter to you?" I'd ask the same question. Given a
face-to-face encounter with the Man, I'd venture, "Do you know who I am?
In the great scheme of things, do I count for anything?" Because so many
messages tell us we don't. We get laid off at work, and declined for credit.
Everything from acne to Alzheimer's leaves us feeling like the girl with no
date to the prom. So we react. We validate our existence with a flurry of
activity. We do more, buy more, and achieve more. Like Jacob, we wrestle. All
our wrestling, I suppose, is simply asking this question: "Do I
matter?"
All of grace, I
believe, is God's definitive reply: "Be blessed, my child. I accept you. I
have adopted you into my family." Adopted children are chosen children.
That's not the case with biological kids. When the doctor handed me to John
Sterling, my dad had no exit option. No loophole. No choice. He couldn't give
me back to the doctor and ask for a better-looking or smarter son. The hospital
made him take me home. But if you were adopted, your parents chose you.
Surprise pregnancies happen. But surprise adoptions? Never heard of one. Your
parents could have picked a different gender, color, or ancestry. But they
selected you. They wanted you in their family. But you object, "Oh, but if
they could have seen the rest of my life, they might have changed their
minds." That’s the point.
God saw our
entire lives from beginning to end, and in spite of what he saw he was still
convinced "to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself
through Jesus Christ.” (Eph. 1:5) We can now live "like God's very own
children, adopted into his family – calling him 'Father, dear Father.' . . .
And since we are his children, we will share his treasures – for everything God
gives to his Son, Christ, is ours, too." (Rom. 8:15, 17) It really is that
simple. To accept God's grace is to accept God's offer to be adopted into his
family. Your identity is not in your possessions, talents, tattoos, or
accomplishments. Nor are you defined by your divorce, deficiencies, debt or
dumb choices. You are God's child. You get to call him "Papa." You
"may approach God with freedom and confidence." (Eph. 3:12) You
receive the blessings of his special love (1 John 4:9-11) and provision. (Luke
11:11-13) And you will inherit the riches of Christ, and reign with him forever.
(Rom. 8:17)
But the adoption
is horizontal as well as vertical. You are included in the forever family.
Dividing walls of hostility are broken down, and community is created on the
basis of a common Father. Instant family – worldwide. So rather than conjuring up
reasons to feel good about yourself, trust God's verdict, instead. If God loves
you, you must be worth loving. If he wants to have you in his kingdom, then you
must be worth having. God's grace invites you to change your attitude about
yourself and take sides with God against your own feelings of rejection.
Remember Lee? Well,
things got worse before they got better. He and his two brothers were taken to
several towns. On the sixth day someone in a small Texas town adopted one
brother. Then a family selected Lee and his other brother. But soon Lee was
sent to another home, the home of a farming family. But he’d never been on a
farm. The city boy didn't know not to open the doors to the hen house. When Lee
did, the angry farmer sent him away. In a succession of sad events, Lee had
lost his father, had ridden a train from New York to Texas, had been separated
from his two brothers, and been kicked out of two homes. His little heart was
about to break.
Finally he was
taken to the home of a tall man and a short, plump woman. During the first
supper Lee said nothing. He went to bed making plans to run away. The next
morning they seated him at a breakfast of biscuits and gravy. When he reached
for one, well, I'll let him tell you what happened. “Mrs. Nailling stopped me. ‘Not
until we've said grace,’ she explained. I watched as they bowed their heads.
Mrs. Nailling began speaking softly to ‘our Father,’ thanking Him for the food
and the beautiful day. I knew enough about God to know that the woman's ‘our
Father’ was the same one who was in the ‘our Father who art in heaven’ prayer
that visiting preachers had recited over us at the orphanage. But I couldn't
understand why she was talking to Him as though He were sitting here with us
waiting for His share of the biscuits. I began to squirm in my chair.”
“Then Mrs.
Nailling thanked God ‘for the privilege of raising a son.’ I stared as she
began to smile. She was calling me a privilege. And Mr. Nailling must have
agreed with her, because he was beginning to smile, too. For the first time
since I'd boarded the train I began to relax. A strange, warm feeling began to
fill my aloneness and I looked at the empty chair next to me. Maybe, in some
mysterious way, ‘our Father’ was seated there, and was listening to the next
softly spoken words. ‘Help us make the right choices as we guide him, and help
him make the right choices, too.’ ‘Dig in, son.’ The man's voice startled me. I
hadn't even noticed the ‘amen.’ My mind had stopped at the ‘choices’ part.”
“As I heaped my
plate I thought about that. Hate and anger and running away had seemed to be my
only choices, but maybe there were others. This Mr. Nailling didn't seem so bad
and this thing about having an ‘our Father’ to talk to shook me up a little. I
ate in silence. After breakfast, as they walked me to the barbershop for a
haircut, we stopped at each of the six houses on the way. Each time, the
Nailling’s introduced me as ‘our new son.’ As we left the last house I knew
that at first light the next day I would not be running away. There was a hominess
here that I'd never known before. At least I could choose to give it a try. And
there was something else. Although I didn't know where Papa was, or how I could
write to him, I had the strong feeling that I had found not one but two new
fathers, and I could talk to both of them. And that's the way it turned out.”
To live as God's
child is to know, at this very instant, that you are loved by your Maker – not because
you try to please him and succeed, or fail to please him and apologize, but
because he wants to be your Father. Nothing more. All your efforts to win his
affection are unnecessary. All your fears of losing his affection are needless.
You can no more make him want you than you can convince him to abandon you. You’ve
been adopted, and you have a place at his table.
Grace,
Randy
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