As in days of pastoral ministry, my wife and I last evening visited a lonely lady of many years in her humble little trailer home. Some kind person brings her week by week to our Bible study class and she takes an active interest and often contributes helpful comments.
There was on the wall a portrait of her in her beautiful 21st year, yet she said she was not a Christian then; she grew up knowing nothing of what the Bible says. But in recent years she chose to believe, asked for baptism, and enjoys church fellowship. Now she is a competent Bible student and she enjoys what Jesus promised, “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly” (John 10:10, KJV).
What interested me was her remark, “I was a throw-away baby, raised as an orphan, early taught to work.” Here is a soul saved by the grace of the world’s Savior!
I thought of Psalm 27:10: “When my father and my mother forsake me, then the LORD will take me up.” Actually, that truth applies to each one of us, no matter how loving our parents may have been.
Each of us is an individual created and redeemed by the Lord; we have each been given a new life, for none of us is a clone. There always comes a time when “father and mother” can go no further with us; God decreed in the beginning that “man [shall] leave ... father and ... mother” (Gen. 2:24) and henceforth his/her relationship with the Lord shall be that of child-to-Parent more intimate than any that can be known in the best of our childhoods.
We go through the longest of our lifetimes crying as a child continually “in the Spirit of adoption, ... Abba, Father!” (Rom. 8:15). The Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is infinite but deeply personal to each of us, as though we were His only child.
The Lord Jesus has taught us, “After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven ...” (Matt. 6:9). He is “in secret,” He sees “in secret,” and we are to “pray in secret,” using carefully chosen, thoughtful words (vss. 6-8). We are to “call no man your father upon the earth: for One is your Father, which is in heaven” (23:9). In other words, we are to be “protestants” forever, not because of cold theology but constrained by purest filial love and loyalty.
The Lord has “taken up” each of us as an “orphan”! Be forever thankful.
Be sure to check your e-mail for "Dial Daily Bread" again tomorrow.
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