God Is Their Father

Father to the fatherless, defender of widows—this is God, whose dwelling is holy.

Psalm 68:5

TERESA HAS A ministry in her church, helping orphans find adoptive parents. She finds that many Christians are reluctant to adopt today because of the horror stories they hear—especially about kids from foreign countries. In some cases, those kids have been abused in their homelands. If and when they are adopted, they bring plenty of emotional baggage with them, even at age one or two years.

But Teresa repeatedly says it’s all worth the effort. And she speaks knowledgeably. She has two adopted kids—a girl from China and a boy from Kazakhstan. After the adoptions, at great expense, she and her husband discovered that both children had developed serious medical and emotional problems from difficulties they encountered before Teresa and her husband took them in.

As Teresa prays about kids who need parents, the verse above is one of her favorites. She feels that even kids who do not find homes have a blessing: God is a father to the fatherless. He is there with them, no matter how troubled their circumstances.

God’s heart is too great to overlook a single child, with or without a family. His promise is to take those fatherless children and make them his own in a special, loving way.

And the overriding promise we all can enjoy is that God is the father and protector of those who are weak. Anytime we feel weak and vulnerable, we can depend on him to take care of us.