This weekend has been mind blowing and heartbreaking. The suffering of orphans, the oppressed, the marginalized, the modern day slaves has been so present and so offensive to me this weekend.
I started out my Saturday serving with a local ministry called JusticeMatters, a group very close to my heart. We kicked off our year of free Christian legal clinics by laying on the hearts of local attorneys and law students a vision for serving our city in Jesus' name. Among our long term goals: free or reduced fee adoption services for families living out the gospel in their own family through adoption. This thrills me to no end that the Lord uses even lawyers to bring Him glory in this way.
Throughout the weekend I've also been following the Together for Adoption conference in Austin, TX. How I wish I was there. Knowing that an adoption spares a child from a life of sex trafficking, fatherlessness, hopelessness, suicide, prostitution, crime, abuse. And there are so very many children. I know what joy and promise just one child brings. What joy and promise for a child and for obedience to the call are families foregoing by refusing to adopt?
These two events have so much to do with one another. A child brought into a family where he can know love and Truth and hope is a child who is spared from being a statistic in our legal system. 10% of children aging out of orphanages commit suicide. 90% of persons in US prisons were in the foster care system. So many attorneys are employed and an enormous portion of our state and federal budgets spent on the aftermath of fatherlessness. How different would our court systems, our cities, our families look if Believers intervened and loved the fatherless child, a child with no family to care for and protect her as their own? Vastly different, vastly better.
That's about all I can do for now. Thanks for coming back.
~Katie
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