Witnessing the deprivation around her, Emma felt called to act. After talking and praying with her husband Peter, a pastor on their housing estate, they decided to adopt a child. After all, as she says, “Adoption is God’s idea”. Because God is a loving Father, “He adopts us into His family with all of the rights, privileges and blessings of being His sons and daughters”.
Emma doesn’t want to sugar-coat reality, however. Life can be challenging: “The trauma is still there and the diagnoses still come.” Yet she has never regretted their decision to adopt. God gives her all she needs to do the next thing faithfully.
And God has always cared for the vulnerable. As Moses was imparting God’s laws for living according to His ways, he passed on God’s urging that His people were to look out for the “fatherless and the widow”. They were to “love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt” (Deuteronomy 10:19). Even as God cared for them, so too He required them to love others with a hands-on love, shown, for example, by giving them food and clothing (v. 18).
We may not feel called to adopt a child, but we can ask God to equip us to support those in need. When we ask Him, the Source of all resources, to help us discern how to act in serving others, He delights to answer those prayers.
By Amy Boucher Pye
REFLECT & PRAY
How might God be asking you to reach out to someone in need? How could you direct your prayers for others today?
Dear God, I want to glorify You by sharing Your love with those in need today.
SCRIPTURE INSIGHT
Today’s passage (Deuteronomy 10:16–22) is written in a more elevated style from the rest of the book; it contains more descriptive language and uses rhetorical devices—such as repetition of ideas in different forms—to allow the hearer to absorb the content. This suggests that Moses’ speech is reaching a climax. Old Testament scholar Daniel Block says that Moses “is about to declare the moral and spiritual implications of the privilege of covenant relationship that he has been preaching to this point of the second address.” The moral requirement is adherence to the law of God. Moses reiterates this three times with three different admonitions: keep the commands ( vv. 12–13), circumcise your heart (v. 16), and fear and serve God (v. 20). Each of these calls to submit to and serve God is followed by an attribution of praise (see vv. 14, 17, 21).
J.R. Hudberg
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