Pensees: It almost seemed selfish

It almost seemed selfish

A father explains why he has decided to adopt an orphan. This is a good read.

An excerpt:

When I was growing up I always thought of adoption as being what a couple would do when they couldn’t have children “the regular way”. Certainly that happens, and we should be thankful for those couples whose desire to have children leads them to go through the process of bringing a child into their home through adoption. It wasn’t until recently that I began to thinking of adoption as an alternative for couples who have already been blessed with biological children. I don’t know why I thought that, but I did. Perhaps it was because I thought that there was no shortage of parents willing to adopt and therefore, an adoption by a couple that already had biological children would be at the expense of a childless couple who was already willing and waiting to adopt. It almost seemed selfish.

That type of thinking made it easy for me to sit on the sidelines and admire those who adopt. If I wanted to feel good, I could even contribute money to an organization like Shaohanna’s Hope or Samaritan’s Purse and help out a child without having to invest much more than the price of a cup of coffee a day. I’d hardly even feel that, and I could go on pursuing whatever other goals, dreams, ambitions, and desires that I had. But those goals, dreams, ambitions, and desires were all impediments to me doing what James tells us is “pure and undefiled religion”.