Oh how this season always makes me miss my friends and family down in Texas. It starts in November, which is National Adoption Month, when my girlfriends Morgan and Eugenie come to mind so often and their stories of how the Lord blessed them and their husbands so richly through adoption.
So I asked Morgan, who is the mother of two beautiful girls, if I could share this short exhortation she wrote last year.
“The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.” –Romans 8:16
Leaving the candlelight Christmas Eve service last year with rare, beautiful snow falling, my ten-year-old daughter typed out on her new DS: “I am so glad GOD PICKED YOU as my mom.”
Any mother would love to hear these words, but they took on a different meaning because of the way we became a family. My daughter had only come to live with us a year prior and had experienced moving from home to home to home. And yet, through all her suffering and pain, her heart was full of gratitude that night for God’s provision for her. Her eyes were open to His active love that gave us to each other in the mystery of His redemptive work. The celebration of the birth of Jesus inspired her to consider our journey of being chosen.
This journey of being chosen is all of ours, for through Christ we have become God’s children. God picked us. We are His. God’s love manifest in the incarnation of His Son becomes our redemption. The love of the Son makes us God’s own.
Last Christmas Eve, the wonder and gratitude of a child opened my heart more deeply to the truth of our being welcomed into the heart of God as His children. May our hearts be drawn ever more deeply into His.
Loving Father, we thank you for sending your Son as a human son that we may live into the fullness of our identity as your children. Open our minds and our hearts to hear the Spirit’s testimony that we are yours. Grant us the grace and humility to approach you with the wonder and mystery of a child.
