 "The fire of love stops at nothing -- it sweeps everything before it. Flood waters can't drown love, torrents of rain can't put it out. Love can't be bought, love can't be sold -- it's not to be found in the marketplace." Song of Songs 8:7
IEP Help Marital Bliss advice column |
Maggie lives in a colorless world -- a drab building. The people there care about her very much and provide her needs as best they can but at the end of the day they go home and are replaced by different workers. They too go back to their homes when their shift is over. This happens day after day. And then one day which seemed to be like every other day Magdelena is given a bath, her hair is brushed, her clothes are put on and she is fed breakfast. The workers clean off her face and carry her to a room she has never been in before. There are two strangers in this room who are smiling at her. The people she is used to leave her in this room with the strangers. These strangers speak a different language than she is used to. She doesn’t understand them but she can tell they love her. She begins to feel happy in their presence. They give her small gifts and take her outside -- a place she has never been before. It has a ceiling that is blue and doesn’t end. There are beautiful noises and songs she has never heard. Everyday they come back and she begins to fall in love with them. There is something different about them. Even though she just met them things aren’t drab and colorless when they are around. She begins to feel like she wants to stay with them. Then one day they come and their eyes aren’t smiling. These big people are still loving her but they look sad. They aren’t talking as much. They hold her and just look at her. Something isn’t right. The worker comes to take Magdelena back to her room but Maggie doesn’t want to go with her. These loving people reassure her it’s okay and go with her to her room. One of them takes her from the worker and holds her. But then she puts Maggie in her crib and says some strange words Magdelena hadn’t heard from her before and this person has water in her eyes and it is running down her cheeks. Maggie knows these people who changed her world are leaving. She cries and won’t be comforted. She now has seen and felt that her world could be different. She doesn’t want to stay in the colorless place. Part 2 It is another morning for little Maggie. She is bathed and dressed and fed. But something is different in her drab world. It seems there is something trying to burst through the colorless place -- what is it she cannot understand. She watches and wonders about what she is sensing. And then light bursts in. The front door opens. Sunlight pours into the dingy green room. One of the loving people are back. Little Maggie remembers. This loving person takes Maggie in her arms. Is she going to leave again? No, the loving person holds onto Maggie and carries her out the door. They go very very far. Little Maggie doesn’t understand what is happening but the loving person is taking her along. She feels that she gets to stay with this loving person. The colorless world is gone. Her new world is so full of light, full of colors she has never seen; tastes she has never tasted; sounds she has never heard. Everything is brighter and bigger and beautiful. She is now in a new world to stay. An Explanation and an Offer Maggie is a real little girl but she also stands for all of us spiritually. We all need to be adopted spiritually. And if you have met Christ you are part of God’s family -- but do we know what that meant for Him? Whenever we chose to say yes to Jesus’s gift of forgiveness and salvation He was there and we entered a new world. We couldn’t comprehend what it cost Jesus to be able to offer us this gift of salvation. Even if we have been Christians for years we can only understand a small part of it just like a child who has been adopted can only eventually understand just a fraction of what their parents had to do legally to allow that child to become theirs. There is so much paperwork and cost and pain and waiting and tears and frustration and sadness in getting the legal system to say, “Yes, this child is yours.” But when all the requirements are met that same legal system will say, “That child is your child.” The legal system doesn’t see a difference between the child who was adopted and the child who was born biologically into a family. When you are someone’s child no matter how you got there, you are that person’s child by law. God wanted us to be His children so He had to fulfill the Law’s requirements. The only way to do this was by sending His Son Jesus, having him born of a virgin, growing up in a world filled with sin -- a world much drabber and dingier than we fallible humans even know -- and then killed on a cross as a criminal. On the third day He came back to life and then in that glorious moment the way was open for God to adopt us when we say yes to Him. It isn’t the way we would have chosen for the requirements to be filled but the Law is the Law.We would have loved to just bring Maggie home when we visited her in the Spring of 2003. And I guess if we could have taken her and somehow gotten her on the plane and brought her home she could have come home with us but she wouldn’t have been ours. The only way for her to become our daughter is for us to fulfill the requirements of the Law. And we are gladly doing it. She won’t know all that we had to do but we would do all of it again and do even more if that is the what the law required just so we can bring her home. God’s love for you is so much more than our love can ever be for our children. And He will do and has done so much so you can come home. But what is different about spiritual adoption from physical adoption is that you choose if you want to be God’s child. Maggie has no choice. She will be our daughter because we chose her. You have a choice. God has chosen you but you have to say “yes.” If you haven’t He is waiting. He has done all the work to make your adoption possible. He has done everything. You just now have to say “yes” and come home. He says, “Please come home. Please. I’ve done it all. I’ve made the way. You can leave your lifeless, drab world behind and enter into the world of life and love and joy and contentment. You just have to say yes.” |
