November is probably my favorite month. The weather is great, there’s Thanksgiving, and the start of college basketball season (Go Hoosiers!). But another great thing about November is that it’s National Adoption Month, the highlight of which is Orphan Sunday. Orphan Sunday is a day of celebration and adoption awareness started by the Christian Alliance for Orphans (CAFO). On Orphan Sunday, churches around the country talk about the cause of orphans and the biblical calling for the church to embrace adoption. The sad part is that I’m willing to bet most of you didn’t hear anything like that in your church service.
Let me clarify a bit, I’m not calling out anybody’s pastor. Our church is like many of yours in that we have a dedicated and caring ministry team that does amazing work both in the church and in the community. They are a true blessing to anyone they encounter.
So why didn’t we hear anything about the orphans? (If I may borrow from Shakespeare) “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.” We (the church) have to make a bigger deal about adoption. To rely on our pastors to have to “remind” us about adoption issues is a negligence of our duties as followers of Christ. James 1:27 says, “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 people of the church need to make a big deal about this. Orphan Sunday should be something we circle on our calendars every year. We should put it on t-shirts and billboards. We should have huge adoption-related events at the churches. In our homes we should share those little annoying facebook links until they fill up our wall and drive our friends crazy! But we don’t do any of that. We don’t do it because it shines a huge spotlight on an issue that we’d rather keep in the dark; the fact that we aren’t doing enough for God’s children.
Adoption month should mean more to Christians because we are all adopted. When we proclaim ourselves to the world as children of God, we acknowledge our adoption into His kingdom. What does it say about us if we ignore the rest of His children in their time of need?
This isn’t intended to put anyone down or to criticize their church, but simply to ask a question that many of us are afraid to ask ourselves, “Can we be doing more?” If it were your child who was homeless and alone, you would stop at nothing to get them home where they are loved and cared for. Should we care any less when it’s God’s child?
