I know today is Monday. I know that I usually have some “favorite” to share with you for “Make it Monday”. However, today’s Make it Monday post is being commandeered for another type of post. It will be the beginning of a week I want to dedicate to foster care/ adoption awareness. Next Sunday is Orphan Sunday and as we head towards that day, whether through my blog and/or my other social media accounts (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) I will be sharing where my heart is on this matter.

A couple of months ago I wrote a post titled A New Perspective on Being: Pro-Life. It was me sharing some of my heart concerning children who are caught up in the foster system and desperately need someone to walk alongside them through the winding and unpredictable maze of “the system”; children who are waiting for someone to bring them home. It was my own challenge to myself to be willing to step out and be more, to do more.

When I was a young girl, there was a book series I loved to read – The Elizabeth Gail Series. Here is a small synopsis:

“Elizabeth Gail Dobbs is the daughter of Frank and Marie LaDere Dobbs. After Libby’s father abandons her at the age of three, Marie becomes quite promiscuous, and has no patience with her daughter. Elizabeth is sent away through the foster care system and then subsequently returned to her mother. She eventually makes peace with her birth father, after he dies, as she receives a puzzle box in which he had hidden for her many special things, including a document which gives her a part of the deed of a ranch in the Nebraska Sandhills.

Usually, during her early life, she is returned to her mother so that she can receive state aid money to help raise her. As a result, she is derisively called “Aid Kid”. The final straw comes when her abusive mother locks her in a closet after beating her with an extension cord. This forces the courts to put Marie under a restraining order and set the stage for removal of the child. During this time, Marie decides to leave the United States for Australia.

Gwen Miller, a social worker, takes Elizabeth Gail, sometimes called Libby, out of this violently abusive household, and brings her to a farm outside of the Midwestern town (unnamed) in which they lived. At this point, the books themselves begin.”

This series settled in my heart, at a young age, a love and desire to help those children like Elizabeth. I know it was this desire that led me to pursue becoming a teacher. I know it is the same desire that is continually nudging me now, as a stay-at-home/homeschool mom, to not sit silently by and wait for a more convenient time in my life to pursue the cause of little hands reaching out in a cry for help. Rescue.

Here is the thing, though. It is not about me coming to rescue them — It is not about me at all. One thing that God has slowly been revealing, is that the true rescue happens in modeling His adoptive and redemptive love to the fatherless – the kind of love that points to Christ himself, The Rescuer for all mankind. When one of the least of these gets to receive and live out the example of His rescuing love, then, perhaps, they will find themselves at the heart of true rescue, the one that is found in Christ Jesus. That rescue, His rescue, is the one I want driving me in all areas of my life. A Gospel-centered and Gospel-driven life – it can take you to the far ends of the world and it can take you to the heart of a child who is not just waiting for someone to remember them, but rather, is waiting for someone to pour the love of Jesus into them.

So, I ask myself, How far am I willing to trust Him? How much of my life am I willing to interrupt for Him? Am I willing to live out a Gospel-centered and Gospel-driven life…even in my home? Am I going to surrender all my wants and all my comforts for a life hidden in Christ?

David Platt: Orphan Sunday