The Spirit of Adoption

When I was a kid, my sister would sometimes tell me that I was adopted. In retrospect, I think that she was really just expressing that she didn’t want to believe that she and I were blood relatives. After awhile, she may have said it simply because she had learned that the idea horrified me. My parents assured me time and again that I was not adopted.

Looking back, it occurs to me that it shouldn’t really have mattered. I had a loving family, whether that was because they were my blood relatives, or because they had chosen to take me in, it was clear that they loved me. One of my teachers in high school had an adopted daughter. She knew she was, and she had learned to adjust to it. Every so often, somebody would make the mistake of trying to tease her about being adopted. She had a standard response: “Yes, I am adopted. My parents chose me; your parents had to take what they could get.”

That’s actually a powerful statement. The first time I heard that, I actually wished that I had been adopted, even though I probably wouldn’t have ever picked up that little bit of philosophy along the way if I had been. Someone who is adopted may never understand the particulars of their biological family: why they were put up for adoption, what the situation was that their birth parents felt that they didn’t want to raise that child, or whether it was done in the belief that somebody else would be better capable of bringing the child up; there a number of possibilities that the adoptee can never fully appreciate, even if they get a chance to sit down and talk it out with all parties concerned. Yet, no matter what reason the biological parents had for not raising the child, there was a loving family willing to take in a child that was not related by blood and love that person as their own.

Unfortunately, there are some children that never do get adopted. I have a nephew like that; my sister became a foster parent for a while, and, even though the teen-ager that was placed in her home rotated through several foster families before he outgrew the system, he still calls my sister “mom,” and made a point of introducing his fiancé to her before he got married. Whether they live out their childhood in an orphanage, or in a series of foster homes; these people still have worth. Just because the family that they should have had never found them, it doesn’t mean that they are any les valuable than the rest of us. Things happen; there will always be those that seem to get the short end of the stick at every turn.

Even though I was raised by the family I was born into, I know what it is to be adopted into a loving family. In Romans 8:14-17 the Bible tells us that we are the sons (and daughters) of God, and that we have not received the spirit of bondage, but the spirit of adoption. The Spirit itself bears witness that we are the children of God: and if children, then heirs. Galatians 4:4-7 is similar, but explains that God sent His Son to redeem us, so that we could be adopted into God’s family.

This adoption is available to all. Whether it is to those of us that grew up with our natural families, or those that have been adopted before, or even those that have never really had a family, God created all of us, and He would love to welcome you into His family.

A New Inheritance

I have posted about the Prodigal Son before, but I wanted to get into a little different aspect of that parable. At the beginning, it says that the younger son asked his father for his share of the inheritance, and then journeyed to a far country. I think that we should consider that as kind of a strange request. Generally, a person doesn’t inherit anything until at least one of their parents is dead; how does one even calculate what half of the estate would be if the father were dead? Anyway, the father managed to work out something, so that the younger son could get his inheritance, and walk away happy.

Now that younger son takes his inheritance, and travels far away, and he wastes what he has on riotous living. Soon he has nothing. Of course, he wouldn’t have anything to speak of really if he had stayed with his father, but all of his needs would have been met, and he would still have an inheritance coming at the end of his father’s life.

So, he comes to the realization that his father’s servants are living better than he is, and, although he realizes that he has no right to even ask to be treated as a son again, surely there is enough love left that his father will hire him to work for him. Of course, when he returns, the father immediately reinstates him as his son.

Now, one of the arguments that I have heard is that once one becomes a son (or a daughter), then one will always be family. That is true. Of course, just because one is a relative (by blood or by adoption) is doesn’t necessarily follow that one will collect an inheritance. If the prodigal son’s father had died while the prodigal was still in that far country, well, he had already received his inheritance, he wouldn’t have received anything more. Quite frankly, no one would have even known where to look for the younger son. The older son would have been the sole heir of the estate, even though he would not have been the only son.

In the parable, the inheritance represents what God has for us; it represents our salvation. The younger son received salvation, but then he went and just did what he wanted to with it, and gave no reverence to God for it. He wasted it; at some point he no longer had it. When he repented, and returned to his father, he gained salvation all over again. Keep in mind that, at that time, he hadn’t done anything to earn his salvation; he had only repented of the life he had been living.

The father rejoiced, because his son was home. The father said, “My son, was dead, and is alive again.” Is it not clear that if the son had died living his own way, that he was dead to God? It would have been worse for him than if he had never known the Father. I think that it is significant, too, that if you look at Luke 15 (the chapter where the parable of the Prodigal Son is), the other parables told at that sitting all have to do with lost items. The is the parable of the lost sheep (which in this case was found, but there is no guarantee that it would be), and a woman that had ten pieces of silver, but lost one, and rejoiced when she found it (don’t you wish that every time you lost money, you were able to find it again?). Jesus was teaching us about repentance, but also that, just because we have salvation now, it doesn’t mean that we can’t lose it. In these three parables, the lost were all found, because they were parables. Real life doesn’t always work out that nicely; just ask Esau.

Joseph and His Brothers

Most of us know the story: Joseph was the favored son of Jacob. Jacob's love, his wife Rachel, only had two sons, Joseph and Benjamin, although he had twelve sons altogether, and Benjamin was still pretty young. So, already the older brothers are jealous, because Jacob's favoritism is obvious, but then Joseph starts spouting off about dreams that he has had (the sun and moon and eleven stars bowed down to me). The dreams were actually prophesies about the family showing obeisance to Joseph because he made it possible for them to survive the upcoming famine, but, at the time, they just seemed to be boastings of a boy who thought way too much of himself.
One day, the brothers found themselves alone with Joseph, and their father was way out of sight, and some of the brothers started scheming to kill Joseph. Reuben intervened, not because he was less jealous of Joseph than the others, but because he had some idea of what it would do to their father if something happened to Joseph (the beloved son). He talked them into putting Joseph into a pit, while he tried to think of a way to rescue Joseph. In the meantime, some merchants came by, and some of the other brothers decided to sell Joseph as a slave; that way, they got rid of him, and picked up a little extra cash, too. They took his coat, smeared blood on it, and showed it to Jacob. Jacob believed that his most beloved son had been killed by a wild animal, and mourned his loss. I think that the brothers had second thoughts, then, as Ruben had expected, but it was too late. They didn't even know where their brother was.
Years later, after going through a lot of stuff, Joseph is called in to interpret a dream for Pharaoh. The dream is, of course, prophecy about the famine. Joseph tells Pharaoh that he needs to pick a man of wisdom to collect a portion of the crop yield for the next seven years, so that it can be stored and used during the seven years of famine. Pharaoh figures that Joseph was the only man wise enough to interpret the dream, so he's the perfect choice to oversee the collection and distribution of food for the next fourteen years. The famine turns out to be considerably more widespread than just Egypt, but Jacob and his sons hear that there is food in Egypt. The ten oldest sons go down to Egypt with money to buy food. Joseph gives them food, but he toys with them a little. I think part of him wants to punish them for what they did to him, but, mostly, I think he wants to know if they have developed some moral fiber in the years since he last saw them.
One thing that is very clear, as you read the story: Even after all he has been through, Joseph still loves his brothers. He isn't sure how they feel about him, but they seem to have written him off as dead. Of course, they've been pretending that he is dead with their father for years, so maybe this is just force of habit. Possibly they are afraid that word will get back to their father; perhaps Reuben doesn't know what really happened to Joseph, even now. As Joseph pushes and prods his brothers, trying to find out what kind of men they really are, now, it becomes increasingly difficult for him to keep up the pretense. He has to walk away, weep, wash his face, and come back. He sets Benjamin up, the only other son of Joseph's late mother, and waits to see what the other brothers will do. The brothers could easily have walked away; Oh well, Dad's second favorite son is gone, too. They stayed, and they pleaded for Benjamin. This time, Reuben wasn't the only one who thought about what the loss would mean to their father. Eventually, Joseph broke down and revealed himself to his brothers, and told them to go get Jacob, and return, and live in Egypt, and he will take care of them.
Interestingly enough, Joseph’s mother had already died by the time all this happened, and there is no mention of Leah dying, or migrating to Egypt. The prophecy was that Joseph’s parents and brothers should show him obeisance, so, in the absence of his mother, I am assuming that his father’s other wife was represented by the moon in Joseph’s dream. Apparently Leah did make the trip, even though it isn’t specifically mentioned.
In any case, family is important. We won’t always agree with, or even understand, some of the things that our relatives do, but they are still family. We should love and respect our families, even when we have to disagree with them. Jesus made it clear that we shouldn’t let even our closest relatives keep us from living the life of a Christian, but we should still care for them.

UPDATE: It was pointed out to me that I inadvertantly wrote Joseph twice where I should have written Jacob. That has been corrected. My apologies for any confusion this may have caused.