Immeasurably More

National Adoption Month (part 3)

One way you can start a conversation with your children is to talk through these questions during your dinner time tonight. (This is taken from Family Life's "Cry of the Orphan" website).

Around the dinner table discuss the following: Are we rich, poor or middle class? How do we know?

Read these statements
- 50% of all the workers in the entire world (that’s 1.4 billion people) live on less than $2 per day
- 1 billion people in our world do not have access to clean water
- Does your family own a car? If so, you are among the elite 8% of people. 92% if the world's population does not own a car.
By the world's standards… if we earn more than $2 dollars a day, have access to clean drinking water and own a car… guess what! We are rich!

Read James 1:27 “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”

Respond to these statements
- What’s an orphan? Who are the fatherless in our world?
o Orphan – a child who has lost one and/or both of their parents
o In an age of instant communication…of hyper entertainment…of information explosion and saturation…how many of us know that there are now more than 143 million orphans
across the globe?
o That every 14 seconds an AIDS death causes another child to become an orphan?
o That there are more than 118,000 children available right now to be adopted in the United States. Do any of us know an orphan?

- Does God care for orphans in our world? What does His word say about orphans?
o “Vindicate the weak and fatherless; do justice to the afflicted and destitute. Rescue the weak and needy; deliver them out of the hand of the wicked.” Psalm 82:3-4
o “Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from My sight. Cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, reprove the ruthless, defend the orphan, plead for the widow." Isaiah 1:16-17

- Orphans live in foster care homes down our street, in state run orphanages and unfortunately on the street.
o How would your life be different if you did not have a Mom or Dad or both?
o God’s Word instructs us to care for orphans. How would you feel if you were an orphan who felt uncared for by this world? Would God seem real to you in that kind of world?

- How could our family care for orphans in our town, nation and the world?
- What would you be willing to give up to care for orphans in our world?

Closing prayer – “God show us ways we can care for orphans right here in our town, in our nation and around the world. Help us to understand how rich we are in the resources of this world. Give us your heart for most vulnerable in our world so we can make a difference for the orphan.