The Orphan

I watched a Christmas movie this week. Normally, I don't watch Lifetime television, but I am a sucker for everything Christmas . The storyline was an orphan, now grown up, set out on a quest to find out about her "real" parents. She searched out clues and followed them to obscure little towns all over the country. She met numerous people, some good and some bad, each time she wondered if they were "her" people. Over the years, she'd developed many scenarios to explain the absence of parents in her life. They could have been spies, killed in the line of duty, or they might have seen some horrible crime and be hiding out in the witness protection program somewhere. Perhaps they'd been in a terrible accident and had amnesia or were in a coma in some hospital. While the orphanage and numerous foster homes had provided for her every physical need, she longed for more. She longed for the relationship of parent and child. She longed for the sense of belonging and love one only has with family. She longed to know where she came from, hoping it would help her find where she was going. She longed to be loved with that agape, self-sacrificing kind of love.
James 1:27 "Pure religion is this, to visit the widows and orphans in their distress. . ." . While this text is talking about those orphaned physically, the same principle applies to spiritual orphans. They are without a Father. They are without a sense of where they came from and where they are going. They are without the knowledge of agape love, without the sense of belonging, without. . . and they are lost. Some of them spend their entire lives trying to discover who they are. They define their identity by finacial success, power or possessions, only to find out, they still have no idea who they really are. Their entire life has been a quest. They can make up any fantasy about finding themselves and discovering their roots, but in the end, they are nothing more than fanatasies. And they continue to search, orphaned and without . . .
The story continued as the young woman in the movie, wandered into a town on Christmas day. The locals in the town, feeling great compassion on this soul, opened their arms to her. They began weaving this grand story about her parents. They spoke about their generous benevolence, how they were charitable to everyone in town. The mailman told of her "father" rescuing him and all the town's Christmas mail from a deep snowy ravine, on Christmas Eve. The librarian spoke of her "mother" singing in the church choir, feeding the poor at the local homeless shelter and even giving of her own Christmas dinner when food ran short. The local sheriff regaled her with stories of her "parents" and their good deeds. To this town, her "parents" could do no wrong. The town concocted a story of their untimely death and the kidnapping of their only child. They described a town mourning for some of their best and brightest. The young woman decided to stay in town and try to live up to her family name. As time went on, she discovered their deceit and although angry at first, she had fallen in love with this small town and they had adopted her and over the years they had become her family, For the first time in her life, she had all she wanted.
We were also once spiritual orphans, but thanks be to God for the blood of His Son. We are now adopted. We are a part of the family. We have a sense of belonging ---we have a Father. We have that agape kind of unconditional sacrificial love. We know where we came from and where we are going. But there are so many others still looking----looking to be adopted----looking to belong---looking for a Father. On this day and every other that follows, we must remember the greatest gift we can offer is the way to the Father. The gift of knowing, of belonging, of finding, of experiencing adoption into the Heavenly Family------sharing that---that too is pure religion.

Neva