By: The Rev. Dr. W. Ross Blackburn
Callings come in (at least) two ways. Sometimes the Lord calls a person or a community to something specific and makes his will known specifically. For instance, despite his protestations, the Lord called Jeremiah to be a prophet (Jeremiah 1). Sometimes callings are the simple outworking of the Lord’s commands to his people concerning the kind of people they are to be. For instance, the Lord called the nation to “defend the fatherless and plead for the widow” (Isaiah 1:17). Why? Because this is what the Lord does (e.g. Psalm 68:5). As the Lord does, so do His people. This is the foundation of calling.
Which brings us to adoption. This week’s NT lesson cited above is full of gospel hope and promise. In Christ, God adopts us as His children, assures us we are His, and grants us an inheritance, that alongside Christ. This is who God is, and this is how He responds to a world full of orphans. Therefore, this is who we are as well.
God adopts children, and therefore so do his people. In other words, adoption is not an unusual or a special calling, but rather a normal calling for God’s people. If this is the case, then perhaps discerning the call to adopt does not begin with the question, “Is God calling us to adopt?” but rather, “Is God calling us not to adopt?” After all, if adoption is what God does, perhaps the unusual calling, at least among those who are able, is not to adopt.
What if the Church was known for adopting those who are “unplanned” and “unwanted”? (Unplanned and unwanted by whom?) What if every crisis pregnancy center had a list of people who have agreed, beforehand, to adopt any baby whose mother walks into the center, so that a confused teen or a struggling mother of other children can look at adoption practically instead of theoretically? What if the Church adopted so eagerly and regularly that adoption seemed far more normal (and therefore less strange and perhaps less scary) than it does now in the ears of most women in crisis pregnancy?
The mark of the Church is love, costly love that works itself out practically in bearing one another’s burdens. A Church that speaks with integrity in matters of life is a Church deeply invested in adoption. How important to us, really, are the lives of unborn children (who will become infants requiring diapers, then youngsters requiring carpools, then teenagers requiring college education, then…)? We will know by adoption.
In the end, discerning calling is a question of willingness. Of course we need to pray, to seek God’s face. But there is much we already know. Do we understand that we are not our own but have been bought with a price? Do we know that our worship depends upon our availability and the transformation of our thinking? In closing, hear Paul’s words concerning discernment, a bit further along in Romans:
I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect (Romans 12:1-2).