We're all adopted

We are in the midst of celebrating Treston's adoption. It's so great! I think we say his full name all the time, just for fun. We are celebrating that nothing could ever make him NOT a Bacak from now on...that he is in every way ours, just like if I had given birth to him myself...and even though we didn't know Treston existed just a year ago, God knew this before time began! It's big!

I've had many interesting discussions with strangers about adoption. We wear adoption on the outside of our family, so people who are interested in adoption or who are just plain curious ask us questions. It's always a great opportunity to bring up the Lord's name with someone who I other wise would never get a chance to talk to! But one of the most heartbreaking conversations took place a few years ago, before we got Treston, and Justus was a baby. I took my kids to McDonald's for breakfast before Emma's school. (Pre-homeschooling) Another Mom and her two boys were there too. Our kids were running around, playing together. She and her kids were black. My kids are white and brown, so they were all swirling together in the McDonalds play area. I love that! She was obviously curious though, and was doing the mega-staring thing. Finally she asked me if Justus was mine. I answered yes, and she asked me how? I told her he was adopted. She waited a minute, and then asked me "How long will he stay with you?" This question threw me off. No one had ever asked me that, and to tell you the truth, it stung a little. I kind of stammered, "Forever! He's ours forever!" She didn't seem to understand that. This really shook me up. I gathered up my kids after a moment and piled them into my mini-van and drove away, crying. I know this woman meant no harm, I just hated the idea that anyone could think that my kids were mine temporarily! That I might just give them back someday. Adoption is forever! Didn't everyone know that? The thought that it wouldn't be was apalling to my spirit as a Mom.

I love that God uses the actual word adopted to describe believers in the Bible. Adoption is forever, so the Bible's use of this word feels so good. When we commit our lives to him, we become His Sons and Daughters, permanently! Why would he use the word adoption? He didn't use a word that means foster care, or respit care or temporary provider, he said ADOPTION, FULL HEIRS, SONS. Doesn't everybody know that means forever? Evidently not, because there are still many schools of thought that assert that we can become a child of God, and then back our way out of it by messing up again. No matter what my kids do, whether they like it or not, they are Bacaks. They are Czech, kolache-eating, music-loving, Jesus-worshipping, Bacaks. Nothing can change that.
I've been dissecting Romans 8, a great chapter, where the word adopted is used. (In Romans, in the NIV, the word Sons or Sonship is used, but the root word is adopted.) You can find it in the New Testament at least four times. Here's a few:

Eph 1:5
5 His unchanging plan has always been to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. And this gave him great pleasure.
NLT

Rom 8:15
5 So you should not be like cowering, fearful slaves. You should behave instead like God's very own children, adopted into his family — calling him "Father, dear Father."
NLT

Gal 4:5-6
God sent him to buy freedom for us who were slaves to the law, so that he could adopt us as his very own children.
NLT

I love that in Ephesians it says he always planned to adopt us, and it gave him great pleasure! (It gives us great pleasure too!)
In Romans it says we can call him, very intimately, Father, dear Father, just like our little ones call us by name, and we are their everything.
And in Galatians, it says he bought us. We too bought our adopted kids, but it was just money. God paid for us with His very own beloved Son, and He sacrificed Him on a cross. As parents, doesn't that mean something altogether new to us? It's unimaginable, how God loves us.
As we celebrate Treston's adoption, I want to celebrate something even bigger; all of our adoption as believers. I want every lost person to know they are available for adoption by the King of Kings! What could be better news than this?