filling the gap

I still haven’t read Henry Blackaby’s Knowing God, but my son, Tim, led a youth Bible study with the book a few years back, before college.  One key concept that lingered from the study was, “Find where God is working and join him.”

You can see how believers have begun to live out that idea, globally.  Christians have taken up the gauntlet for Aids victims and their orphans, tsunami and hurricane survivors, third-world coffee farmers, imprisoned pastors in China, oppressed women in the Islamic world, child soldiers in Uganda and Darfur and sexual trafficking in Asia.  In America, we have caught the vision of freeing addicts, encouraging the grieving – and even housing the homeless.

This morning I was reminded of the open door God has placed among some of our neediest and most vulnerable, here at home.  A radio news flash reported Texas is considering several foster care bills during this legislative session.  After listing a few of the issues to be addressed, the commentator concluded by measuring the severity of the crisis (too few foster parents) by the fact that the Texas Department of Child Protective Services was even housing foster children in hotels.

In 2006, while living in Oregon, I took the six-week training to become a foster parent.  I considered it a necessary part of my self-imposed training regimen to work with at-risk youth.  Oregon was also experiencing the crunch of lack of qualified providers of care – particularly due to severe methamphetamine use by parents in that state.

I was excited and encouraged to see God raise up the Christian community to step in the gap of providing foster care in Salem.  Along with others, a Christian businessman and community leader spearheaded a directed call to churches to ask their parishioners to consider this ministry.  He saw where God was working, and chose to join him.

How many times have we complained that our government is closing its doors on faith?  Any yet, here is a huge, open door.  It’s open so wide, churches are starting support ministries for providers of foster care.  There is a felt need, and the government is unable to meet it.  They are desperate.  And how much more is someone appreciated when they meet a felt need without expectations or demands?

Who is more qualified to meet this need than people who understand God’s unconditional love, grace and mercy?  But we can’t afford to approach this opportunity wearing rose-colored glasses.  It will not only be an opportunity to graciously permeate our communities with the love of God, but an opportunity for him to deepen us – to build within us a more complete understanding of that unconditional love he extends to all.

God, I ask you to raise up people who love you to embrace these children in your name – freely and without an agenda – that you might free them from the oppression and bondage of their fears and pain and give them Jesus.