LISTEN ONLINEWitnessing the deprivation around her, Emma felt called to act. After talking and praying with her husband Peter, a pastor on their housing estate, they decided to adopt a child. After all, as she says, “Adoption is God’s idea”. Because God is a loving Father, “He adopts us into His family with all of the rights, privileges and blessings of being His sons and daughters”.
Emma doesn’t want to sugar-coat reality, however. Life can be challenging: “The trauma is still there and the diagnoses still come.” Yet she has never regretted their decision to adopt. God gives her all she needs to do the next thing faithfully.
And God has always cared for the vulnerable. As Moses was imparting God’s laws for living according to His ways, he passed on God’s urging that His people were to look out for the “fatherless and the widow”. They were to “love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt” (Deuteronomy 10:19). Even as God cared for them, so too He required them to love others with a hands-on love, shown, for example, by giving them food and clothing (v. 18).
We may not feel called to adopt a child, but we can ask God to equip us to support those in need. When we ask Him, the Source of all resources, to help us discern how to act in serving others, He delights to answer those prayers.