Adopted For Life

I want to suggest this book to you!  Brent has already finished it and I have just started it.  I hope to post about what I'm reading along the way.  Here is something Russell Moore says in his book,

"Adoption is, on the one hand, gospel.  In this, adoption tells us who we are as children of the Father.  Adoption as gospel tells us about our identity, our inheritance, and our mission as sons of God.  Adoption is also defined as mission.  In this, adoption tells us our purpose in this age as the people of Christ.  Missional adoption spurs us to join Christ in advocating for the helpless and the abandoned."

Do you think you should read this book?  I do.  Here's why:

"Adoption is not just about couples who want children-or who want more children.  Adoption is about an entire culture within our churches, a culture that sees adoption as part of our Great Commission mandate and as a sign of the gospel itself.  This book is intended for families who want to adopt and wonder whether they should.  It is also intended for parents with children who've been adopted and who wonder how to raise them from here.  It is for middle-aged fathers and mothers whose children have just told them they are thinking about adoption.  But this book is also, and perhaps most especially, for the man who flinches when his wife raises the issue of adoption because he wants his "own kids"-and who hates himself a little for thinking that.  It is for the wife who keeps the adoption application papers in a pile on the exercise bicycle upstairs-as a "last resort"-but who is praying fervently right now for two lines of purple to show up on her home pregnancy test.  It is for the single twenty-something who assumes he will marry after a couple of years in the post college job force, find a nice girl, have a honeymoon for three or four years, and then they'll start thinking about getting pregnant.  It is for the pastor who preaches about adoption as an alternative to abortion on a Sanctity of Human Life Sunday but who has never considered how to envision for his congregation what it would mean to see family after family in the church directory in which the children bear little physical resemblance to, and maybe don't share the skin color of, their parents.  It is for the elderly couple who tithe their Social Security check, dote on their grandchildren, and wonder how they can tangibly help the young couple who ask for prayer every month that they might be parents-and who never seem to show up for Mother's Day services."

I could go on and on quoting from the book.  It's one of those books that I want to underline every other sentence.  I know we have one left in the GCC book room, or if you click on the book above it will take you to amazon.com!