Friday, April 02, 2010

Orphan Care Provides a Foretaste of Future Renewal

Dan Cruver:
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 the story of human history!
The story of our adoption by God is the story of human history because it involves nothing less than the future renewal of all creation.

God doesn’t merely adopt us in order to put 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.

When we work for the alleviation of the orphan’s suffering, we bring God’s future renewing work to bear upon the present. We actually provide the world a foretaste of the great day when creation “will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Romans 8:21). 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.

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