adopted.

Today was another day when I was completed overwhelmed by the generosity of friends.  We literally have a garage FULL of furniture, toys, clothes, bikes, and more... all given to us to sell at our yard sale.  While pricing things I pondered over the three people who gave to us who were adopted as children.  Kevin ran back and forth to get van load after van load of things from a family from church, and when he returned a few minutes ago with the final load, he handed me a card.  In it were the most precious words of encouragement, even more so because they were penned by a woman twice adopted.  


Last month I was captivated by a book review of Russell Moore's Adopted for Life I read in Citizen. More specifically, C.J. Mahaney's foreword that was quoted:

I was adopted when I was eighteen years old. I wasn't an orphan, the way most people think of that term. I wasn't an abandoned child. But I was in a condi­tion far more serious: I was a stranger to the family of God, a slave to sin, and an object of the justified wrath of God.

   I too was adopted into the family of God at the age of 10.  Maybe you've never thought of yourself as such if you are a Christian, but the parallel is too beautiful to overlook!  Throughout the New Testament it says Christians are grafted into the Vine (John 15) and that we are adopted as sons (Ephesians 1:5).  The Bible is also full of adoption stories that I cannot wait to share with Sweet P... Moses, Esther, Jesus...  and the great purpose the Lord had for their lives!


   What makes us family is not blood but relationship.  I'm ever grateful the Lord chose to adopt me and am awed by the fact that He cares to know me intimately.