A Father's Perspective

By Justin

It's clear God has a heart for widows and orphans, as was illustrated in our previous post on how the Bible calls upon us to take care of them.

Justin, portraying Jesus in Graceway Bible Church's "Christmas Live"!

During this adoption process, I keep reflecting on one specific event in the Bible.  In the book of John, there is a moment while Jesus is being crucified.  Almost immediately preceding his death, he performs yet another miracle.  At least, in light of our current circumstances, it seems like a miracle to me.

This moment occurs after Jesus, the perfect and sinless Messiah of the world, had already carried and incurred the entirety of sin, pain and anguish of His creation.  After He had already been humiliated, with soldiers throwing the equivalent of dice to see who would get His tunic, right there in front of Him.  After being mocked by the crowd while He suffered for each of them.

The moment is recorded in John 19:25-27:

Therefore, the soldiers did these things.  But standing by the cross of Jesus were His mother, and His mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas and Mary Magdalene.  When Jesus saw His mother, and the disciple whom He loved standing nearby, He said to His mother, "Dear Woman, behold your son!"  Then He said to the disciple, "Behold your mother!"  From that hour the disciple took her into his own household.

The miracle is that Jesus created a family!   Although the passage is primarily cited as an example of God's caring for widows (housing a widow was customary with Jewish law at the time), I keep coming back to the fact that Jesus didn't just say "Hey, you should take care of this woman!"  He used words reserved for an extremely personal relationship:  "mother" and "son."

In this moment, Jesus was physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted.  Bleeding, crushed, humiliated and about two or three breaths away from death.  And what did He do?  In the few minutes remaining before yielding His spirit, He created a family?!  He provided a mother to a son and a son to a mother.  After this, Jesus stated "It is finished," and died.*

Out of the chaos surrounding the cross of pain, suffering, fear, hate, and rejection, Jesus used love to create a family.  Two people's lives were unified in that moment.  It is a testimony to the importance of family to God.

I keep reflecting on this moment in the Bible.  It echos back to when our path toward adopting Jenny became a reality all those months ago.  As we were scrolling through the "other angels" pictures on Reece's Rainbow, Jenny's page struck us in a special way.

Although her story certainly spoke to our hearts, it was her picture that stood out.  It felt familiar, like we were looking at a picture of our child.  It felt as though Jesus said to us "Behold your daughter!"

Almost 2,000 years later and Jesus is still making families through adoption.  It's a blessing that He's using us for His purpose!

*The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the grave occurred three days later, as He overcame sin and death.