Lord, you are going to have to show me!

“Lord you are going to have to show me!”  222 pages of children waiting for a family on the “Adopt US” webpage:  children in the United States who have no family.  Children who live in a world where no one wants them.  Children who have next to no chance at a stable, permanent home where they can rest in the security and unconditional love of a family of their own.  That many orphans in this country, under our ‘roof’, within easy reach of the church.  And there are hundreds of thousands more  languishing in foster care.   Many of these children will bounce from home to home, never knowing the security and love that their devastated hearts long for. 

In the U.S. 423,000 children are living without permanent families 
in the foster care system.  115,000 of these children are eligible for adoption, but nearly 40% of these children will wait over three years in foster care before being adopted.

Over 65,000 children in foster care in the U.S. are placed in institutions

or group homes, not in traditional foster homes.

Neglect was reported for 54% of all children entering foster care

by their parent or primary caregiver.  Parental substance abuse was a circumstance present for 28% of the children entering care.      

States spent a mere 1.2-1.3% of available federal funds

on parent recruitment and training services even though 22% of children in foster care had adoption as their goal.

“²⁷ Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”

Lord, you are going to have to show me.  As I scroll through page after page of listings of orphans in this country, I am swallowed up by the need.   I do not know how to choose a child from this sea of children.  Biography after biography with pictures of sweet little faces and big, brave smiles.  Kids without a family who will take them and love them and call them their own.  If I am entirely honest, I am terrified of choosing any child.  I am terrified of what it might mean for our family and the way it might turn our easy, well- managed, neat and convenient into hard, chaotic, messy and uncomfortable.    But I know.  I know this is what He has called us to.  We have all felt it. . .every one of us, separately and together.  For nearly ten years I have argued with Him, reasoned with Him, alternately ignored and wrestled with Him.  No more.  It is time for obedience. 

 5A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows,

is God in his holy dwelling.

6God sets the lonely in families,^b

Psalm 68: 5-6