Urban Adoption FAQ #1 Why Adopt?

While we wait for our approval/travel date, I wanted to compile a list, in writing, of some of the FAQ's of our adoption. Questions were to be expected, and while John and I had prayed, sought the Lord, and sensed without a doubt that adoption was part of His plan, we know it is helpful to have answers for people who ask, or wonder without asking. Since there are so many questions, and so many reasons, I will focus one per post. And the first one is the obvious:

Why Adopt?

1. Why not?
2. We have extra beds, plenty of food, and room for more around the table.
3. There is plenty of love to go around
4. There are millions of orphans praying every night for a family to call their own. We will get to be the answer to one of those prayers.
5. Our kids have asked on many occasions for more brothers and sisters. Why not take one that's already here on the earth?
6. I was always the kid bringing home abandoned and stray animals (even a dead skunk, once, which I was sure I could revive with the proper TLC). Now it's abandoned kids I'm on the lookout for.
7. Adoption is a beautiful picture of God's acceptance of us into His family, even with all of our problems and special needs.
8. James 1:27 "Pure religion is to look after the orphans and widows." How much more clear could that be?
9. 1 John 3:16-17 "But whoever has this world's goods and sees his brother in need and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him?" More than anything else, I want the love of God to abide in me.
10.Luke 12:48 "To whom much has been given, much is required." Our family has been blessed beyond measure. The least we can do is care for one of His sheep with whatever challenges may come with that.

There are many ways to help those who are special in God's eyes (the orphans and widows). It could be being a foster parent, providing clothing or food for families who are fostering, helping a widow mow her grass, babysitting for a single mom trying to put food on the table, "adopting" a college student, or person in a nursing home who gets no visitors, sponsoring an AIDS orphan in Africa, buying a pair of shoes for a child whose father is absent, adoption....the list is endless. I love this quote from Mother Teresa:

Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.