The Orphan
James 1:27 says,
"Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this:
to visit orphans and widows in their affliction."
GOD’S HEART MOVES TOWARD THE CRY OF THE ORPHAN.
SO SHOULD OURS!
10 Ways Every Christian Can Care for the Orphan and Waiting Child
(hopefororphans.org)
1.PRAY for them
2. SPEAK UP for them
3. PROVIDE for their needs
4. SUPPORT those who support them
5. PROTECT them from harm
6. VISIT them where they are
7. GIVE sacrificially to them
8.ENCOURAGE them to press on
9. ADOPT them into your family
10. MOBILIZE your church for them
THE BIG PICTURE!
The following is from orphansunday.org and was written by Dan Cruver (2009), visit TogetherforAdoption.org
"God has called the church to care for orphans. But the practice of caring for orphans is fraught with massive challenges. Allow me to overwhelm you with some staggering numbers.
• There are 143 million orphans in our world. If all the orphans in the world were
moved to the country of Mexico, Mexico’s population would more than double,
growing from 108,700,000 to 251,700,000.
• Over 16 million children were newly orphaned in 2003.
• There are approximately 17.5 million orphans who are ages 0-5. !
• There are approximately 47 million orphans who are ages 6-11.
• There are approximately 79 million orphans who are ages 12-17.
• 87.6 million orphans live in Asia.
• 43.4 million orphans live in Sub-Saharan Africa.
• There are as many orphaned and vulnerable children in Ethiopia as there are people
in greater NYC.
• 12.4 million orphans live in Latin America and the Caribbean.
• Almost 1.5 million children live in public care in Central and Eastern Europe. That’s
our world.
What about the United States?
More than 800,000 children pass through our country’s foster care system each year.
There are over 500,000 children in our foster care system right now. 129,000 of those
children are waiting to be adopted from foster care right now. That’s how many people
live in the capitol of South Carolina. Approximately, 25,000 children age out of the
foster care system each year; many with no support system and little to no life skills.
There are currently over 5,400 children in South Carolina’s foster care. Over 1,500 of
them are waiting to be adopted. So far this year only a couple hundred of them have
been adopted.
This brings us to this question: How many children are adopted each year? Between
118,000 and 127,000 children have been adopted every year since 1987. More than 50
percent of all adoptions are handled by public agencies or come from countries outside
the United States. More than one-third of Americans have seriously considered
adopting, but no more than 2 percent have actually adopted. Only 4 percent of
families with children (1.7 million households) contain adopted children.
With this many orphans in the United States and in the world, the church has a
monumental task before it if it is to practice true religion. !James 1:27 says, "Religion
that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in
their affliction." !Clearly, the church has its work cut out for it.
But as I noted in passing earlier, Christians who are not confident of God’s love and
delight in them as His dear children will find extremely difficult to care for orphans
when it’s hard, really hard. When you’re not convinced that the Father delights in you
even as He delights in Jesus, you don’t have the emotional capital necessary to visit
orphans in their distress over the long haul."
