National Adoption Month Thoughts

Our lives as believers are meant for so much more than we let them be in our great country. It's easy to be complacent, even apathetic.  Sometimes I desperately wish I could WAKE UP! (spiritually) then other times I lazily drowse like a fat cat in a sunny window, happy that my life is warm cream and a soft pillow.

 

But it's not like that for everyone. In fact, it's not for a lot of people. The Bible calls them the needy, fatherless, orphans, widows, those in prisons (physical and spiritual)...I think a lot about those people. But I still think of myself more. Lord help me, I don't like it. But what's that verse of Paul's? That which I will I don't do, and that which I don't want to do I do...or something like that- Oh wretched man (woman) that I am!

 

 

Yesterday in my daily Bible reading I came to a verse that zapped me- I mean it slayed me! You might not be as moved as I was over it, but the Holy Spirit was speaking to ME, in MY quiet time (of which there is far too little around here)- the verse is the Lord God Himself illustrating what Knowing Him really is- and isn't that the point of all our Bible reading and church going and sermons, and studies...to KNOW Him?! I felt like I hit the jackpot!

Ready...? here it is:

 

Jeremiah 22:16 He judged the cause of the poor and needy; then it was well. Is not this to know me? declares the LORD.

SO, there you have it in a nutshell. Serve and love others. Take care of the defenseless ones. The proof is in the pudding, so-to-speak.

It brings to mind 1 Corinthians 13

 

1Co 13:1
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
1Co 13:2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
1Co 13:3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
1Co 13:4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant
1Co 13:5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;
1Co 13:6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.
1Co 13:7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
1Co 13:8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.
1Co 13:9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part,
1Co 13:10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.
1Co 13:11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.
1Co 13:12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
1Co 13:13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

and it flat out smacks of James 1:27

 

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.

 

and

Pro 28:27 Whoever gives to the poor will not want, but he who hides his eyes will get many a curse.

Can't forget Deuteronomy either...- it's all over the whole Bible for Heaven's sake.

SO, my grand plans about giving up foster care for infants and maybe even adopting again? (so that I can have time for horseback riding, visiting, travel, making cheese, get a tan, work out...blah blah blah) I'm going to have to shelve that for now.

Because I want to wake up and try to remember this:

1Peter 2:9

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy

nation, a people for his own possession, that you may

proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of

darkness into his marvelous light.