You don’t choose your family. They are God’s gift to you, as you are to them. — Desmond Tutu
I know a missionary family in India that perfectly displays the family of God. It’s not because they’re perfect, because they aren’t! But they’ve been assembled perfectly, just as God has assembled us.
It all started one day when they came out of their home and found a one-day-old girl lying on their front step—alone, abandoned, dying. They picked her up, bundled her up warmly and held her to their chests. She lived, and they kept her as their own. They began to hear about others who had been thrown out like trash (literally) on the side of the road. One by one these newborn girls have been brought into the missionary’s home. At last count, there are more than twenty of them who are growing in Christ in this beautiful family.
It’s messy and loud, but it’s real. Really real. When the mother was asked what she was going to do with all these girls, she replied “I’m going to give them my name!” And in a sea of nameless orphans, that’s a huge, life-changing gift. With a name, they belong.
This is another picture of what God has done for each of us—and a challenge to live differently in the family of those who are saved.
The Church takes orphans, the Church takes deserted people, the Church takes abandoned people and pulls them in, and God gives them His Name. He gives them a family.
See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! (1 John 3:1)
- Are you willing to allow Jesus to live out this reality through your own life?
- Do you see yourself as an orphan saved into a new family?
- Are you willing to be used by Him to expand His family in this way?
Father, by Your love and strength, may it be so. Amen.