the reason

Right before our trip to Ethiopia, our pastor at church asked us to stand up and talk about our adoption. Jason was preaching that day, so he kindly let me do the adoption talk. The last thing he said to me was, "just don't cry." HA! I think I cried through the whole thing. But, knowing that I would cry, I typed it out so that I didn't babble and would still make sense.

Here is what I said...

So, why adopt? It kind of goes back to Manuel’s message last week when he was talking about the value of human life. Jason and I have talked about adopting since before we got married. But, its not just a way to expand our family. We don’t have any biological children and don’t know that we can’t. But, it’s about saving a life. Its about giving a child a chance. A future.

John Piper did a sermon on adoption, and someone recently read part of it to me. I think it sums up a lot of our view of adoption perfectly.

He starts with Ephesians 1:1-6. I’m gonna skip ahead to verses 5 & 6. In love, he predestined us for adoption through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.

I think first and foremost our desire to adopt comes from the fact that we ourselves have been adopted by Christ.  Without this reality we would have no hope or future in this life. 

This sort of leads in to one of the implications he gives for adopting children…which is that we adopt a child for God’s glory, not our own. And that’s where we are. Jason and I want to bring a child into a covenant family and to share our faith with him. To give him hope and a future in the same way that God has given us those things. He will obviously not be ours biologically but, we hope that this will  serve as a testimony that God didn’t adopt us according to the color of our skin or any thing else that he could have seen in us but because he loved us.