Filled: Devotions for a Foster Parent's HeartSample

Day One

My dad got mad and pushed me down the stairs, and I couldn’t walk for a while—it was no big deal.”

“The judge didn’t even look up from the papers while I told him what they had done to me.”

“I love her so much, but I just can’t stop using, no matter how hard I try. I promise I really do love her.”

“In the middle of the night, I see the bad man, and I remember what he did to me.”

Dark things brought into the light, confessed to me with side glances of shame by hurting children and parents.

There is a darkness to foster care, a darkness I didn’t realize I would be surrounded by, walking through, inviting into my home when I became a foster parent. Sometimes it feels as though I am walking through the very valley of the shadow of death, a place where the bright and good that family and justice and wholeness should be have become dim and dark and distorted.

I need a light and a lamp, something supernatural to illuminate the way.

Enter the light-bearing Word. The miracle of the gospel is that God sent the Word—His only Son—to make Himself known to His created beings. The miracle of Scripture is that He gave His written Word to continue to make Himself known to His created beings.

The Word—God’s written Word, recorded in Scripture—is not just a place where we come to know about God. It is the place where we actually come to know God Himself. The words that make up the Word of God are not simply letters and phonemes.

They are “living and active” (Heb. 4:12 ESV), “breathed out by God and profitable” (2 Tim. 3:16 ESV)—this isn’t poetry; this is fact. Scripture is alive and accomplishing, brought to life by the mouth of God Himself. His Word has the supernatural power to “impart understanding” (Ps. 119:130 ESV) and “sanctify [us] in the truth” (John 17:17 ESV). It is not a “human word, but. . . the word of God, which is indeed at work in you” (1 Thess. 2:13). As my feet step into dark spaces, the Word serves as a lamp. As I walk along a dim path, the Word brings light. Because “the unfolding of [His] words gives light” (Ps. 119:130).

This is not only because wisdom and direction are found in His Word; it is because He—the Word, Jesus Himself—is found in His Word. “The Word [is] God” (John 1:1), and He is “the true light that gives light to everyone” (v. 9). When Jesus stepped into darkness and claimed, “I am the light of the world,”

He promised, “whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” (8:12 ESV). It is not just principles and precepts that we need; it is Jesus. Reading His words and His miracles in the Gospels, learning the truths of His death and resurrection in the epistles, seeing His ultimate glory in Revelation—these reveal the Savior to us and invite us into worship of Him and relationship with Him. The glory of the Word (Scripture) is that it is there that we see glories of the Word (Jesus).

Foster care is a dark place full of evil and pain and injustice. But “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (1:5). He, the Light of the World, is with you. And not just with you and watching. With you and leading. With you and providing. With you and lighting the way.