God Intended for Families to be Together...
God intended for families to be together forever in love and unity. God intended for parents to care for their children and for children to be cared for by their parents. God created the family unit, and it is sacred to Him.
But sin. Sin is the destroyer of what is beautiful, the breaker of things that are whole. And it wreaks havoc on the family.
As foster parents, we know just how amiss the plotline has gone. We hold the quaking bodies of infants poisoned by their mother’s bloodstream. We wipe the tears of frightened children, abandoned and left to fend for themselves. We salve the wounds and tend to the broken bones of bodies abused by their God-given protectors. We cuddle the necks of half-awake, half-asleep children consumed by fears of the remembered. We listen to real-life tales of unimaginable horrors and if-only-could-be-forgotten recollections.
Sin has marred God’s good plan of family. “But sin” isn’t the end of the story. The story always ends with “but God.”
Jesus came to restore that which sin destroyed, to repair what sin has broken. He came to make all things new. He came that we “may have life and have it abundantly” (John 10:10). He came “to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10), “to destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8), to “deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to . . .slavery” (Heb. 2:15). “Jesus came into the world to save sinners” (1 Tim. 1:15).
If we don’t see our kids’ parents—ourselves—in these verses, we need to pray for eyes to see. God is about—and has always been about—redemption and restoration. It’s throughout all the stories of the Bible, from Adam and Eve to King David to the woman at the well to Peter.
It’s the heart of the big story of the Bible, the gospel of Jesus Christ. God is about redeeming and restoring sinners to Himself. And God is about redeeming and restoring that which sin has destroyed. Including the family.
•
Excerpt from my book “Foster the Family” - available wherever you get your books. 🫶🏼
