the O.R.P.H.A.N.
O - Open your heart. God tells us in James 1:27 "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world."
The orphan is not on everyone's radar...but they should be. God calls us to look after them. To provide for them. To give them hope. God doesn't tell us, if you feel passionately about orphans look after them, He simply says "do it".
R - Recognize your responsibility for them. After we are able to open our hearts to the 138 million orphans world wide, we need to recognize that we are responsible for them. If we aren't willing to be, who will?
P - Prevent orphans. Orphans are not able to advocate for themselves. They are children, without parents, who end up in orphanages, foster care, state custody, or on the street. We need to take personal responsibility for them and quit leaving it up to everyone else. We need to be creative in the ways that we can help prevent more children from becoming orphans. We could provide money or medical care for mothers so that they can keep their children. We can pray on the behalf of families who are facing this situation. We can lobby with our local law makers to keep the laws of our country on the side of the fatherless.
H - Help orphans. Deuteronomy 10:16-19 says, "Circumcise your hearts, therefore and do not be stiff-necked any longer. For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes. He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow and love the alien, giving him food and clothing. And you are to love those who are aliens, for you yourselves were aliens in Egypt."
We are responsible for relieving their hurts. We can give clothing, food, money, and medical donations. We can visit orphanages and state facilities playing with the children and loving on them. We can befriend a foster family and take the children out on special outings doing things that a normal family does.
We need to defend their rights. They are children with no voice, who else will defend their rights? Deuteronomy 24:17-18 says, "Do not deprive the alien or the fatherless of justice, or take the cloak of the widow as a pledge. Remember you were slaves in Egypt and the Lord your God redeemed you from there. That is why I command you to do this."
We can provide long-term solutions. A long term solution is NOT an orphanage, foster care, or state custody. A long term solution is a FAMILY.
A - Accept them into families. Psalms 68:5-6 says, "A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling. God sets the lonely in families, he leads forth the prisoners with singing; but the rebellious live in a sun-scorched land."
God sets the lonely in families. I know not everyone is able to actually adopt or become foster parents. (Although, many more are actually able then THINK they are!) But we are all able to HELP others accept them into families! We can pray for the adoptive families, help financially, care for their other children while they travel to pick up their new addition, donate items for fundraisers, etc. There are a million ways to help bring orphans to families, you just have to get creative and look at what your God given gifts are...and use them!
Children are meant to be raised in families. In homes. With parents, and siblings. With love. Children are not created to be raised in orphanages or state facilities. They do not prepare children to enter into the real world at age 18. Only homes are suitable to prepare children for real life. Only families provide the love and care that children need to thrive.
N - Never forget the church. Who is open 24 hours a day 7 days a week? Only the church. There are 2.3 billion people in this world who claim to be "Christ followers"...that's a lot more families than orphans. Why isn't the math adding up?
I firmly believe that everyone is able to open themselves to the orphans of the world. You can open your heart, eyes, mind, and homes to these awesome kids. If there are 138 million orphans in the world that's a large chunk of our world's future. Who is going to get to them first? Who is going to show them love first? If it's the Christians, then it will be a Christian influence that they have. If it's another religion, that will be their outlook. If it's the seculars, etc. I hope that it will be the Christian people of the world that will open their hearts, obey God's command, and show these children the love of Jesus Christ.
Adoption takes sacrifice. Think about it. God sacrificed his son so that we could be adopted into His family. Can you imagine sending your one and only child to earth to suffer and die so that you could adopt all the children of the world? That's exactly what God did! Adoption wasn't the easy choice for God. It isn't an easy choice for those of us who are adoptive parents today either. It requires sacrifice. It demands of us a change in our financial stability. A commitment to love a child that isn't part of you and your husband, a child with possible medical and emotional problems that you can't know about until they are in your family forever. A sacrifice to risk your heart and lay it out there for much longer than a usual pregnancy only to find out that maybe your baby dies before you can get them home, maybe the country shuts down or changes laws and they won't be allowed into the the United States. Maybe the biological parents change their mind and decide to keep the baby. There are lots of risks, lots of sacrifices...but it's what God calls us to do.
If orphans and / or adoption are heavy on your heart please pray about it. God will show you some practical (or maybe not so "practical"?) things that you can do to help His children...the Fatherless.
James 4:17 says "Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it, sins."
Proverbs 24:12 says "If you say, 'But we knew nothing of this,' doe not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who guards your life know it? Will he not repay each person according to what he has done?
I will be writing another post soon with a list of websites, resources, and practical ways that everyone can help...
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