Today is Orphan Sunday. It is a day set apart to lift up the fatherless worldwide. A day of prayer, connection, and action. A day I long to see no longer needed. Currently there are an estimated 15.1 million orphans globally. I did some number crunching to give you a picture of how many children that actually happens to be. Enough to fill all 32 NFL Stadiums and the largest NCAA football stadiums right at five times. Combined the capacity for those stadiums is 3,226,166. That means you could pack those stadiums to the brim and you still couldn’t hold all of the kids that we actually know of and have a statistic to count. That total number doesn’t count children within institutions, slaves of child trafficking, or street children.
If you’ve been around long enough, you know that this is a topic I write on often. In fact, I write a blog on this almost every year and have since I discovered that this day existed. This morning I was teaching the Middle School students and was talking about how God doesn’t need us, but He wants us. It didn’t occur to me while I was studying that the main point for the lesson I was teaching would coincide with today. When I thought about it this morning I told them what today was called. You see, knowing that God wants us even when we are sinful, enemies of God whom do their best to ignore the fact that we need God makes adoption all the more meaningful. Just like people who adopt or foster say we will take them, God says the same thing about us. He knows the good, the bad, and the ugly, and has way more information than people that choose this road ever will about their children and He wants us anyway. That is a huge deal. Who we are doesn’t take God by surprise.
Why throw that last paragraph in when I opened with statistics? Because I’ve not adopted, fostered, or been adopted myself, and using such imagery not only evokes thankfulness to God for my own salvation but it gives me perspective for the children around the world,many of whom don’t know what it means to be loved by parents. Which is again why this whole blog post is being written. They want to be wanted, we as people want to be wanted. The question is how are we going to make sure they know they are loved? I understand that not everyone that reads this will be called to adopt or foster. But, multiple times in scripture we are called to care for the fatherless. James 1:27, Isaiah 1:17, are just two examples that tell us to seek justice for the fatherless or care for the children in need. Maybe that means giving monetarily to local and global organizations that fund adoption grants, maybe it means giving clothes, toys, diapers, formula, and a whole host of items children need to local organizations that help foster parents. It can look like many things. I don’t personally know what that looks like for you. No matter what conclusion you draw on that point you can pray for them. Pray that God would put people in their lives to show them that they are loved whether that be caretakers for a period of time or a family of their own. Pray that the Church would take seriously this command to care for the fatherless.
This, for me, is a personal issue because I want to adopt one day. I’ve spent years waiting for that time to come, prayed for more hours than I can count. While most people dread the big 30thbirthday I anxiously counted down the day that would give me the legal age minimum to adopt from China. Maybe you aren’t like me. Maybe this is the first time you’ve heard any of these statistics. I hope that whatever this post finds you in it educates a little and reminds you that this is an issue we are called to be the hands and feet of Jesus in.
