You’ve probably heard by now that our son, Nathan, and his wife, Emily, have adopted a newborn girl in Florida. They drove up from Florida to Nashville, Tennessee yesterday, where they spent the night with our daughter and family. Today they are on the road driving home to Waterloo with the little one. They’ve named her Raegan Elizabeth and Anita and I can’t wait to meet her.

I’ve preached a lot about adoption from the perspective of us being adopted into the faith, but I believe the Lord is about to teach me invaluable first-hand lessons on what adoption really means. Our family is adopting into our family a child from completely outside our family, culture, and socio-economic background. And she will be treated like one of the family from this moment on.

Isn’t that exactly what God did for us? Paul wrote, “For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, “Abba! Father!” (Romans 8:15).

Tags: adoption