These are the orphans. The ones who belong to no one. The ones who have never seen love. The ones who have nowhere to go, but into the hands of their tormentors. These are the royalty of heaven, who have become the hated of earth.
It didn't used to strike me as a tragedy. We hear the command to "care of orphans and widows" so often in the Bible that I think we tend to overlook the faces behind those words. Growing up, my best friends down the street were adopted from China, Vietnam and South Korea. I knew it was sad for someone to lose their family... but they would be okay, just like my friends. Somebody would love them, someday. In the meantime, my life shouldn't be affected.
It brings me to my knees, to know how different those thoughts are from reality.
Alice Richards, an expert in the field, describes the following encounter:
"Battle-hardened soldiers were speechless as they peered into the dirty room. At first they appeared to be inside a primitive tomb filled with two-dozen lifeless bodies. As the soldiers’ eyes adjusted to the dim light, the emaciated bodies of twenty-four children chained to their cribs came into focus. The soldiers were inside an Iraqi orphanage
for special needs children."
These... are God's royalty on earth. They are the highest in the Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus even says that anything you do unto them, you have done unto God Himself. And that is how our depraved world responds.
That kind of horror is not limited to the orphans of the Middle East. In America, there is a genocide of orphans happening every single day, through the abortion industry. Voiceless children are unwanted and unloved by their parents... so they are systematically exterminated. They are abandoned, without ever being given a chance at life.
And God's heart cries out. His justice for orphans is seen so clearly throughout scripture:
"It is not your Father's will that any of these little ones should perish."
-Matthew 18:14
"Jesus said, 'Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.'"
-Matthew 19:14
"You, Lord, hear the desire of the afflicted; you encourage them and you listen to their cry, defending the fatherless and the oppressed, so that mere earthly mortals will never again strike terror."
-Psalm 10:17-18
"A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows is God in his holy dwelling. God sets the lonely in families, he leads out the prisoners with singing."
-Psalm 68:5-6a
These are His beloved. God would give up His own son, to place the lonely in families; to adopt the orphans as sons and daughters. Spiritually, we were once in that position.... fatherless, with no hope. But, as Isaiah 59 says, the arm of the LORD is not too short to save, nor His ear too dull to hear. He answers the cries of the oppressed, and He will bring justice to these children.
Jesus was a refugee; He was also, in a way, an orphan. On the cross, in that deepest moment of need as He carried the sins of the world, He felt His Father turn His back. He cried out, as the forsaken. He knows the pain of orphans more deeply than any of us could. And He has promised to redeem them.
I believe that there will be a day, when He will come and wipe every tear from their eyes. When they will come to Him, and be held in His arms. When their pain will be only a dim memory, driven away by the glorious reality of seeing their Father face to face.
It won't be long.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
No comments:
Post a Comment