Grace and Truth: A word from pastors

This morning I rode bike to school with my new foster child. She has lived with me for a week as I write this, and she has been awaiting adoption for over a year.

Two days into her stay, she asked me if I was going to adopt her. “I don’t know,” I told her. What a devastating question for a 9-year-old to need to ask, and for her caretaker (me) not to be able to answer!

We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies (Romans 8:22-23).

We groan inwardly as we await the fullness of God’s claim on our lives, yet we are already claimed as “heirs of God,” in Paul’s words—much like my foster daughter longs for the fullness of adoption even as she has a safe, loving home with me now.

I imagine creation groaning with labor on her behalf and on behalf of all children who lack safe, loving homes. I picture foxes and oaks and catfish joining their life energies toward the reconciliation of so many broken human families, called to this effort by their Creator.

We can feel the labor pains of birthing a peaceful world not only in foster care homes and social service agencies but elsewhere, too: in neighborhoods and towns, where people work to prevent violence or hunger from taking lives, and in wildernesses, where nature is allowed to thrive, safeguarded from human greed.

The apostle Paul writes, “the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God” (Romans 8:19). Along with creation we wonder, Who are the children of God? Am I? Are you? Are foster children and orphans and refugees and homeless people all children of God?

If asked in church, we might all nod our heads yes, but in moments of conflict or despair, we might truly question: Am I God’s child? Are you, too? Can we really be a family, all adopted by the same divine Parent?

We are a people adopted by God with a history of many glorious adoptions, beginning in the Hebrew Scripture: Pharoah’s daughter adopted Moses when she found him floating among the reeds on the bank of a river. Naomi and her Moabite daughter-in-law Ruth adopted each other when their husbands died. Mordecai adopted his cousin Esther, who saved the Jewish people from persecution by her king-husband.

In the Gospels, Joseph adopted Mary’s son Jesus, even though she became pregnant before they were married. And Jesus, as he hung dying on the cross, instructed his mother and the beloved disciple to adopt one another.

Paul develops the adoption theme as he writes in Romans, “you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption” (8:15). So the opposite of a spirit of slavery and fear is a spirit of adoption? This spirit of adoption is available to all who accept their invitation into God’s family.

Paul writes passionately about being “set free” to live out God’s desire for us and for all creation. Children in the foster-care “system” long to be set free from worry about home and family and to find a place where they can be safe and loved.

Picking up the theme again in Galatians, Paul writes, “you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God.” From what fear or bondage might you yet want to be freed? And into what life or family might you yet want to be adopted?

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God (Matthew 5:9).
Jesus calls us to make peace in small and large ways, in our homes and in faraway places. We are already children of God before we do this, but we become more fully adopted daughters and sons of God’s peace when we share and rejoice in Jesus’ peace.

The message of reassurance today on my favorite prayer site (www.sacredspace.ie) speaks to God’s loving adoption of each of us: “Love changes everything, and my troubles and fears are to be put in their place within the limitless love God has for me. This is the peace Jesus offers, not a life free of challenges or suffering.”

In the church, we find mentors and companions, much like foster parents and siblings, who foster faith within us and help us face our challenges and suffering.

The term “foster care” is exactly what we might hope for in the church: nurture that promotes the growth of our whole selves—body, mind and spirit—and the growth of communities of peace, as we await the fullness of our adoption by God with Christ.

Sara Dick is associate pastor at Shalom Mennonite Church in Newton, Kan.