This thought came to me as we were singing at church on Sunday. The line in the song was “Oh death where is your sting? Oh hell where is your victory?” I was holding Jordan and thinking how for kids like him and Daniel the is healing is so slow. The wounds they’ve received are deep and though we’ve given him so much of ourselves it hasn’t been enough. And the kids we leave behind in the orphanage are soooo hard to think about. It SEEMS like hell has a victory in them. That place seems like such a black hole of suffering that our meager efforts can never undo the pain those kids have endured. But then it came to me, that our little efforts of adopting these two boys, out of many children, are just a down payment on Jesus’ final and forever victory. His rescue will be COMPLETE. When He is done with that orphanage and those kids there won’t be any pain left. One day He is coming back and He is going to take it ALL away. He will undo the years of neglect and fill those kids up with so much love and light that the years of waiting will be crowded clean out of their hearts. They just won’t be able to keep a hold of it. What little we’ve done, that has resulted in a partial rescue, a little healing, is a beginning of His greater work in these boys lives. We’ve applied the battlefield first aid if you will. It’s not enough, but it’s not for nothing. It is good and right. When we visited the orphanage in May, I was overwhelmed with the weight of suffering there. My heart breaks for all the children left behind. But the message I want Rachel to take in her heart when she picks up Daniel from the orphanage is, “Tremble you darkness. We are just the advance scouts. The cavalry is coming.”
-Brian