waiting to love

Adoption often feels like a waiting game. There is waiting for paperwork, waiting for approvals, waiting for travel. But for parents, it all comes down to waiting for their child or children to come home. Shayna and I currently find ourselves right in the middle of this game as we adopt from Uganda. Adoption has been said to be pregnancy without a due date. And it is true – we are expecting but don't know if it will be next week or next year. However, just when I feel the strain of such waiting, I think of our child or children.

Like us, they too are eagerly waiting, but their waiting looks far different. We wait knowing that we will soon see our precious child or children; they wait not knowing if they will ever have daddy or mommy. We wait ready to hold our precious child or children; they wait desperate to be held by daddy and mommy. Ours is a waiting to love, theirs is a waiting to be loved. And isn't this just so with our heavenly Father.

He, too, waited to love as mankind searched for love in all the wrong places. It was called the 400 years of silence – the biblical time from the last prophet, Malachi, until the angel, Gabriel, announced the coming of one who would be born King of the Jews. I have often wondered what it would be like to live in the kingdom of Israel during this time. Here was a nation with prophets declaring the coming of a Savior. Yet generation after generation, these prophecies went unfulfilled. Soon even the prophets ceased to be and a nation fell into utter darkness. No word from God, no sign of the Savior, just waiting. But at just the right time, "the people walking in darkness have seen a great light." (Isaiah 9:2)

And so it was, our Father stepped down and became God With Us in order that we who believe might forever be with Him. It is a true adoption story. One that involves much waiting, but in the end, all waiting is forgotten in the joy of a Father's union with His children. This Christmas season as I eagerly await such a union with my own child or children, I pause to thank my Father for His never-ending love for me. Soon I can shower my own with this type of love and I can hardly wait!