An interesting perspective on our adoption into God's family and the orphan...

Last October, as we wrote about in one of our first blog posts, we attended a conference called Together for Adoption in Texas. It was basically the turning point or catalyst that helped us to launch this ministry. One of the organizers and speakers, Dan Cruver, is very active in the orphan ministry world and writes some amazing posts that we follow. He has a heart for adoption and seeing the Church rise up to answer the call to care for the orphan. We wanted to re-post a great piece he wrote on our adoption into God's family and today's orphan. It's a great perspective. If you want to read more of his work, check out the Together for Adoption page.

"Adoption is not just about our entrance into the family of God, as great and as wonderful as that is. It’s also about our participation in the grand story of redemption. When God adopts us, He catches us up into the greatest unfolding story of human history. Actually, it is God’s story of human history and involves nothing less than the future renewal of all creation.
God doesn’t merely adopt us in order to place us in His family. His adoption of us is actually the means by which He brings His healing and freeing reign to bear upon all of the created order.

This aspect of God’s work of adoption has massive implications for how we think about caring for orphans (James 1:27). For example, for those whom God has adopted in order to one day bring about the renewal of all creation, orphan care becomes an opportunity to provide a foretaste of that future renewal.

This understanding of the relationship between God’s work of adoption and our care for orphans is extremely important, as it transforms not only the way we think about orphan care but also the way we practice it."

Dan Cruver, Sept. 1, 2011

The Together For Adoption Conference is happening this year in Phoenix, Arizona on October 21-22. For those of you starting an orphan ministry at your church, we would highly recommend attending this conference. You won't be disappointed! It is one of the best initial investments you can make to get your ministry up and running. We still haven't fully sorted through all of the info and resources we picked up in the two days last year!