I love being adopted!

I recently experienced my 45th birthday. Now I know we are supposed to say we celebrated our birthdays but every year it becomes just another day. But my wife and kids like to celebrate the day and so I join them. However there is a date that approaches a few months after everyone of my birthdays that I do celebrate. Albeit alone. I was born on Feb. 23rd but on May 13th of that same year I was adopted. On Feb 23rd I was given a name and on May 13th I was given a new name with a new life and a new family. So May 13th has become the date I celebrate.

I have no desire to connect with my birth family other than to tell her thank you. I would say, Thank you for making one of the toughest choices a mother ever will have to make. I honor her for this reason.

I love being adopted. My parents (the ones who adopted me) brought me into their family as a full fledged member. I was given a new name with all the rights of that name. I was given the right to participate in every blessing and struggle of that family just as those members born into that family participated. It was and is just as if I always belonged to them.

Did I deserve any of this? No, I had done nothing to earn my way into this family and never was a threat made that if I did not perform to a certain standard would I be sent back. My parents showed me unconditional love and grace.

Today as a Pastor I have the joy of telling people about a God who wants to adopt them into His family where they will know and experience every right of a child of God. I get to share with them how they do not have to deserve it or earn it but that God has paid the price. God shows them unconditional love and grace because he sent His only Son to die on the cross for all of our sins, so that through Jesus we can become a child of God.

So today while I do not celebrate my birthday, I do celebrate my adoption. I have been adopted into the Loewen Family and I have been adopted into the Family of God.

Do you love being adopted too?