An Easter adoption.

This past week I had a memorable experience that made my Easter more meaningful. A close family friend of ours is a single mom with one daughter. Through the pain and confusion of adolescence, this young daughter became pregnant. When a person, a family, goes through this valley, they can go one of two ways out the other side. They can blow apart, become hardened and bitter, or they can yield their broken hearts to Christ and let the healing begin.

This small family chose to give up their hearts to God’s care, and in the process the daughter also decided to give up her baby to another couple’s care. This unexpected child would be adopted.

I was honored when the family asked me to come to a small ceremony in which my young friend would say her good-byes and pass her baby to the waiting arms of the adoptive couple. I was overwhelmed by the moment. I watched the face of the mother – too young to have to grapple with this moment, full of pain, longing, but courageous enough to choose a better life for her baby. I watched the waiting parents, years of wanting a child, now this open door, and the joy of receiving the answer to their prayers. And I watched the baby, a little girl, totally oblivious to my extended prayer of blessing on everyone involved, blissfully self-centered.

But she will grow up knowing the deep love and grace of her story. A young mother who so loved her that she chose a better path for her, and in doing so sacrificed her own desires. A couple who chose to open their family to someone they didn’t know.
And that’s what Easter is about. A Savior who had created us and then lost us to our own painful choices. A Savior who was willing to sacrifice His own desires and well-being to open a better path for us. A Father who pursued us even in our sin, and adopted us back into sonship with Him. And I have to admit, I felt a little like the Holy Spirit in that moment, praying over this child, assisting the mother as she passed her little girl over to the new parents.

I’m thankful for this picture I experienced. And most of all I am thankful for the deep love and grace of God that provided us with a life-saving adoption.

In the same way we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. Galatians 4

he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. Ephesians 1