Monday, July 08, 2013
On Being Childless
Kevin White writes at Mere O about calls to adoption for childless couples:
Childless best sacrifice
I want to push back against a convention that seems to be developing in evangelical circles that if you are without children, and did not wish to be so, you ought to adopt. There is a subtle shift in adoption from a good option for a childless couple into something like a moral obligation. Or at least, a suggestion that if adoption is so good and praiseworthy, that it is bad and unworthy not to feel a call to it in such circumstances.He goes on at length to discuss the difference between a good thing and a command, and then concludes with these extraordinary insights:
Or, least glamorously of all, it may be a vocation to live, in holy contentment, with the frustration of a good and beautiful desire. To frankly recognize what has been providentially denied to you, but to live the Christian life learning to praise the God who did not provide that blessing. It’s not a vocation you can easily build a movement around. It has none of the flash and glamor of a grand adventure, but all of the romance and glory.Living in precisely that place, I can tell you that God can and does work in your life through such denials as well as through blessings. God's grace produces what is best in us, which is not always our hearts desire. Sometimes what is best comes precisely from having that deepest desire denied. That may be the hardest, but best, lesson of all.
Childless best sacrifice
