I first heard this article read at a worship conference where Brian Doerksen was speaking about the revelation of going from orphans to sons and daughters of God. It has probably been the single most influential sermonette of the year for me. It isn't the entire article, although I'd encourage you to read it in it's entirety at some point. But this, just this little bit... This, I will never forget.
Abba Changes EverythingWhy every Christian is called to rescue orphans.
Russell D. Moore | originally posted 7/02/2010 08:59AM at www.ChristianityToday.com
The creepiest sound I have ever heard was nothing at all. My wife, Maria, and I stood in the hallway of an orphanage somewhere in the former Soviet Union, on the first of two trips required for our petition to adopt. Orphanage staff led us down a hallway to greet the two 1-year-olds we hoped would become our sons. The horror wasn't the squalor and the stench, although we at times stifled the urge to vomit and weep. The horror was the quiet of it all. The place was more silent than a funeral home by night.
I stopped and pulled on Maria's elbow. "Why is it so quiet? The place is filled with babies." Both of us compared the stillness with the buzz and punctuated squeals that came from our church nursery back home. Here, if we listened carefully enough, we could hear babies rocking themselves back and forth, the crib slats gently bumping against the walls. These children did not cry, because infants eventually learn to stop crying if no one ever responds to their calls for food, for comfort, for love. No one ever responded to these children. So they stopped.
The silence continued as we entered the boys' room. Little Sergei (now Timothy) smiled at us, dancing up and down while holding the side of his crib. Little Maxim (now Benjamin) stood straight at attention, regal and czar-like. But neither boy made a sound. We read them books filled with words they couldn't understand, about saying goodnight to the moon and cows jumping over the same. But there were no cries, no squeals, no groans. Every day we left at the appointed time in the same way we had entered: in silence.
On the last day of the trip, Maria and I arrived at the moment we had dreaded since the minute we received our adoption referral. We had to tell the boys goodbye, as by law we had to return to the United States and wait for the legal paperwork to be completed before returning to pick them up for good. After hugging and kissing them, we walked out into the quiet hallway as Maria shook with tears.
And that's when we heard the scream.
Little Maxim fell back in his crib and let out a guttural yell. It seemed he knew, maybe for the first time, that he would be heard. On some primal level, he knew he had a father and mother now. I will never forget how the hairs on my arms stood up as I heard the yell. I was struck, maybe for the first time, by the force of the Abba cry passages in the New Testament, ones I had memorized in Vacation Bible School. And I was surprised by how little I had gotten it until now.
...
Little Maxim's scream changed everything—more, I think, than did the judge's verdict and the notarized paperwork. It was the moment, in his recognizing that he would be heard, that he went from being an orphan to being a son. It was also the moment I became a father, in fact if not in law...Doerksen's main point was that we all go through seasons where we need to be reminded of our position in God's kingdom and family. We aren't little orphan Annie's who have to clean the floors and windows to earn our keep. We are purchased, ransomed, treasures, His babies! Most importantly we are His own. There is no earning of a position at God's table. We all come in unclean and leave cleaned because we belong to Him and He calls us sons and daughters.
When we believe we're orphans, we protect our little territories of influence and manipulate our circumstances to make us look noble or brave. There is no real discipleship being poured from us into others. There is no genuine chase after the stamp of approval from God and from our Godly leaders. But when we lift our eyes from our crouched place there in the corner, when we really look at God and acknowledge that He is calling us enough; not in ourselves but because He is. It's then that we can be transformed into the loving, free, bold children of the King. It's His love that we respond to, scripture says that it's His kindness that leads us to repentance. It's His unrelenting love, His "I hear you" love, His "it's not too late" love, His "you MATTER" love.
There is
nothing like His love.
