Thoughts about adoption – written on the plane to Ethiopia to pick up TJ & Brielle.

(See, I didn't waste ALL of my time on the plane watching ridiculous movies!)


Tebarek and Biruk are coming to us with NOTHING. They have no belongings at all. All they have are their own tiny little bodies. They will be given some clothes and a pair of shoes that they will be wearing when we pick them up, and they may have one or two of the things we sent to them in care packages if they were able to keep them. That is such a sad thing to me. And they are only 2 of millions and millions around the world. It’s hard to imagine owning nothing except our own bodies.

But as I think more about it, God is revealing to me how that is exactly a picture of us as we come before Him. We have nothing. We may “think” we have something that we bring with us, but we don’t. We literally have nothing to offer but our very selves. Our own bodies. Any possessions we have were given to us by God. If we have any talents or abilities, they also came from God. We can use those for Him, and we can give them to Him – as well we should.

Paul spoke of us giving our bodies as a living sacrifice. Sometimes we forget we have nothing else to give. Anything else is not truly a sacrifice made by us – it was given to us by God. We’re just giving us what is His. Our bodies are the only things we have that “belong” to us. That makes our bodies the only things we can really sacrifice. So, we come before God with nothing to offer but ourselves. Nothing we could possibly bring would make us more valuable to Him. Nothing. We must be living sacrifices. Our gifts, abilities, and possessions (that came from Him in the first place) can be offered, but if God so desired, He could take it all away and give it to someone else. Because of the way He made us, what He can’t give to someone else is our bodies. That is why our bodies are the ultimate sacrifice. When we view our very bodies as belonging to God rather than to us, we will also view everything that our bodies accomplish as God’s, as well. We will recognize that all gifts, talents, and abilities are from God and that anything we have earned by using these resources also belong to God.

So, our new children come to us with nothing but themselves. And that’s all we want. There’s literally nothing they could bring with them that would make them more valuable to us. Nothing. All we want is them. There’s nothing better.

And that’s all God wants – us. Just us.