I love celebrating Father’s Day, especially due to the fact that I am privileged to be married to one of the world’s best daddies. God has certainly blessed our home by giving us this faithful man. He has fathered five biological children: one precious little one taken to Heaven before birth, one beautiful daughter resting in the arms of Jesus after succumbing to a serious illness early in her life, and three strong sons who are still part of our lives. I am thrilled that those sons have all fathered their own families, demonstrating the faithfulness and stability that they have learned through years of watching their daddy’s example. Not only has my husband physically fathered these five children, but has also fathered a sixth child, a daughter, through adoption. God worked out the details miraculously; she came to us directly from His gracious hands from a country on the opposite side of the world, from a culture diametrically opposed to that of the United States. After wading through mountains of paperwork, enduring the roadblocks, having our lives put under a microscope, and meeting all the prerequisites of the adoption process, our day before the judge finally arrived. And what a day that was! With one powerful signature, this little angel legally became our child, a joint-heir with her big brothers to all that belongs to her daddy, including his name.
We have a birch tree in our back yard that provides me a vivid physical picture of what happened during that adoption process. The tree has a forked trunk and a branch from one fork has solidly rooted itself into the other fork. The branch is so firmly imbedded into that trunk that it has become part of that trunk, immoveable, powerfully grafted into that piece of wood. That is adoption, folks; it was the grafting of that small baby girl into our family so that she becomes one with our family, in no way inferior to our blood-related children. Those pestering three boys are officially her big brothers for life, and yes, she is stuck with them. Best of all, she now can legally call that man who fought his way through the complicated adoption process her daddy.
Christ did the same for me when He died on the cross and bought me with His blood. I was “…of my father the devil,” but God took me and grafted into His family on February 16, 1975, I became His child in a glorious moment of grace and forgiveness, and now I can call out to my new Daddy, saying, “Abba, Father.” I am part of the family of God, joint-heir with Christ, a child of the King. I can’t even grasp that thought, I’m a child of the King of Kings. What a glorious position is mine through that spiritual adoption! Have YOU been grafted in?
Romans 8:15 For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.
Father, I am overwhelmed and humbled to be part of Your family, bathed daily in Your love, care, and affection. Thank You for the adoptive process and the impact of that process in my life. Thank You for making me, a lost sinner, a child of the King.