How to care for the "Least of These"...The Right Way

The church that I attend recently started up an adoption/foster care group where people come together and share life, struggles, and laughter while brainstorming ideas about how to suck others into our madness.

Yesterday we compiled a list of all the opportunities that we have been kicking around to present to the congregation over the course of the next year (maybe even longer...the list was l-o-n-g).

Here are some of the topics that we came up with:

• DCS
• Gateway Woods
• Loving Shepherd Ministries
• The Harbor St. Petersburg
• Special needs (DS, HIV, older children, sibling groups, etc...)
• Ray of Hope Medical Missions
• Safe Families

Following our meeting I overheard a conversation that basically had the gist of "I believe so much in what I am doing that I just don't know if I can, in good conscience, promote what you are doing."

Oh dear. The slippery slope. One that I have often found myself plummeting down.

I can only believe that this zeal comes from a good place. But where that zeal becomes a problem is when we use our calling to bludgeon others for having a different call.

When we were adopting Daniel, I had a friend confide in me that she and her family was looking to foster a teenager in a very rough situation through the foster care system. I didn't say anything, but my initial reaction was not to be happy for her, was not to support. But rather to judge. To think of all the reasons that I would never do that...(and she shouldn't either). Almost immediately God reminded me that He had called our family to a situation that many people had a similar opinion about. And it made me realize that we are called differently. And I am so glad about that! I am thankful that Father God places the lonely in families.

Why does the way that God goes about that have to be an exclusive thing? Why do we feel the need to cram our agenda down other people's throats?

I absolutely believe to the very core of everything that I am that God called us to go get Daniel. That if Daniel had been a foster kid in Indiana instead of a orphan in Ukraine, we would have been called to foster him in Indiana instead of flying around the world to adopt him.

There are pros and cons to any adoption scenario.

I think the thing that we all need to hold hands and sing "Kumbaya" about, is the fact that a kid who didn't have love, has gotten love.

Sure, we can nit-pick about what is the most effective, most nobel, most needed path to orphan care, but long after the fundraisers are over, long after the accent has worn off, long after the judge brings his gavel down, long after people forget the kid isn't your bio kid, this kid is yours; drinking out of the milk jug, arguing about homework, begging for Elsa from Frozen to come to his birthday party. And you will realize that where they come from is important. And you will get over yourself when it comes to indignation about the way that they came to be available for adoption in the first place.

I believe that there is room for all of us at the table. Those who foster to adopt. Those who foster. Those who provide respite care. Those who do international adoption. Those who adopt domestically. Those who adopt children with Down Syndrome. Those who adopt a small nation. Those who call it quits after one. Those who adopt due to infertility. Those who adopt an extra kid on top of the bios that they already have. Those who adopt children with HIV. Those who adopt perfectly healthy chubby cheeked newborns. Those who don't adopt at all, but faithfully pray and/or send their $38/month to Compassion or World Vision.

This list could go on.

But it boils down to LOVE. The right way? The magical ingredient?

LOVE.

Not ours.

Ours will wear out like a pair of cheap socks.

Only God.