He is Able

After my last blog post, someone commented that the money we will spend to adopt Ai Lan would be better spent on helping the homeless in Stockton.  Can I suggest that God has enough resources and enough members in the body of Christ to help the poor, widowed, AND orphaned all at the same time?  God's money, vision, and love has no limits, so why should ours?

Can we also agree, as Christians, that one person's calling is not higher or greater than another's?  If someone is called to fundraise to assist the local homeless population, they absolutely should do so, and the Church can respond to that.  Each has been gifted in kind for the work that God has prepared for him.  God breaks our hearts for what breaks his, so if your heart for the homeless is broken, embrace that while at the same time respecting other's missions, whether it be the poor, widowed, orphaned, broken spirited, intellectually disabled, unborn, mentally ill, or spiritually lost, and whether it be those who are local or global.

Lastly, I'd like to ask the anonymous commenter one question.  What if it were our sweet, carefree, loving Josie that was somehow stuck, without her family, in a foreign country, and Dan and I had to pay a $30,000 ransom to her captors to rescue her?  And what if I asked our family and friends, many of whom attend our church, to help us raise the money to ransom our daughter, would you also then suggest that we instead donate that money to the local homeless population?  You may not see Ai Lan as our daughter, worthy of a $30,000 ransom, but the minute I saw the words under her face on that website that said, "I have a family," she became our daughter in no less of a way than our biological children became ours at birth.  God has an amazing way of putting love in the hearts of adoptive parents for adopted children even before they take custody of the child.  It's a gift from a God who has already adopted us and as my brother pointed out, your ransom, and mine, cost much more than $30,000.  It cost his life.

Please watch this video.  It's a sermon by Eric Ludy called Depraved Indifference.