More on adoption

From Scotty Smith in Reclaiming Adoption:

"Because the whole pan-national family of God will be adopted(just as God has promised), because Jesus is going to finish making all things new( just as He promised), we can and must give ourselves over to offering this world the first-fruits of the new heaven and new earth. This is why Christians should be the front-line lovers and servants in the world of human trafficking, poverty, hunger, injustice, and indeed, in the world of orphans. Because Jesus has signed on for eliminating the very category and word 'orphan' from the human vocabulary, let's partner with him, one adoption at a time. We cannot and will not possibly fail. Our labors in the Lord are, and never will be in vain!"

Life and Death

Proverbs 24:11-12

" Rescue those being led away to death; hold back those staggering toward slaughter. If you say, 'But we knew nothing about this', does he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who guards your life know it? Will he not repay each person according to what he has done?"

....from Reclaiming Adoption:
" I know of no more beautiful expression of the Gospel in our culture than for an unloved and maybe even unlovable child to be seen and loved by Christian families and Christian churches simply because of God's great love for them. That love is now within us, so we adopt that child and bring that child into our love. We raise that child in the knowledge of God in Jesus Christ. What more glorious, more wonderful thing can we do?"

Words That Demand Action

Deuteronomy 10:18
 He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the alien giving him food and clothing.

Deuteronomy 14:29

The fatherless and the widows who live in your towns may come and eat and be satisfied, and so that the LORD your God may bless you in all the work of your hands.

Deuteronomy 24:17
Do not deprive the alien or the fatherless of justice...

Deuteronomy 27:19 
“Cursed is the man who withholds justice from the alien, the fatherless or the widow.” Then all the people shall say, “Amen!”

Psalm 10:14

You [God] are the helper of the fatherless.


Psalm 10:17-18
 You hear, O LORD, the desire of the afflicted; you encourage them, and you listen to their cry, defending the fatherless and the oppressed

Psalm 68:5-6
 A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling. He places the lonely in families.

Psalm 82:3 
Defend the cause of the weak and fatherless; maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed.

Psalm 146:9
 The LORD watches over the alien and sustains the fatherless...

Isaiah 1:17
 Learn to do right! Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow.

James 1:27
 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.

Micah 6:8

He has showed you, O man, what is good. 
And what does the LORD require of you? 
To act justly and to love mercy  and to walk humbly with your God.