18 July 2009

Adopted for Life-Chapter 1


I just started reading Russell Moore's Adopted for Life. In it, he writes about the role of adoption in the Christian life. I hope to share some of my thoughts about it here. I just finished chapter 1. He gives a good summary of what, in part, this book is about.

But this book is also, and perhaps most especially, for the man who flinches when his wife raises the issue of adoption because he wants his "own kids"--and who hates himself a little for thinking like that. It is for the wife who keeps the adoption application papers in a pile on the exercise bicycle upstairs--as a "last resort"--but who is praying fervently right now for two lines of purple to show up on her home pregnancy test. It is for the single twenty-something who assumes that he will marry after a couple of years in the post-college job force, find a nice girl, have a honeymoon for three or four years, and then they'll start thinking about getting pregnant. It is for the pastor who preaches about adoption as an alternative to abortion on a Sanctity of Human Life Sunday but who has never considered how to envision for his congregation what it would mean to see family after family after family in the church directory in which the children bear little physical resemblance to, and maybe even don't share the skin color of, their parents. It is for the elderly couple who tithe their Social Security check, dote on their grandchildren, and wonder how they can tangibly help the young couple who ask for prayer every month that they might be parents--and who never seem to show up for Mother's Day services.

I definitely can see some of myself in this first chapter. I hope to discover more.

No comments: