The Greatest Secret: How Being God's Adopted Children Changes EverythingSýnishorn

Adoption – A love story 

The boy in the story takes his share of the inheritance prematurely and leaves home on his terms, breaking the heart of his father. Because he had money to spend, he also had lots of friends and for a while life was good. But when the money ran out, his friends ran out too. He tried to get work, but the only job he could get was the one nobody else wanted to stoop to. He was in a bad place. That’s when he realised that home, for all its frustrations, was not so bad after all. He rehearsed an apology and headed back to ask for a lifeline – it was his only hope.

The story zooms into the father, waiting and waiting for his child to come back. Everyone tells him not to bother. The child wouldn’t dare come back. He was probably dead anyway. But the father waits anyway. And one day he sees someone coming down the road towards him. It looks remarkably like the one he last saw walking in the opposite direction. The pace is slower, the mood is more solemn, but he would recognise that gait anywhere. He was the one who had taught the boy to walk in the first place. And just like that time, when as a baby he had taken his first steps, the father opens out his arms in encouragement and welcome and embrace. It is a momentous occasion. 

In that embrace is one of the most amazing pictures of God’s love for us. The lad is filthy, covered in dust, mud, and unmentionably worse, but the Father embraces him anyway. The lad says something about not deserving anything, and he doesn’t, but the Father embraces him anyway. The boy doesn’t even have to mention the obvious thing that all the money is gone, and the Father continues to embrace him. The neighbours laugh at the indignity, and the older brother is indignant, but the father embraces him anyway. He gives him new clothes and prepares a celebration feast. His son, who had officially removed himself from the family by claiming his inheritance, was now, as signalled by the ring on his finger, officially adopted back into the family, fully reinstated as a son.

I relate to the adopted child in this story. I spent many years turning my back on God, living for myself, doing what my ‘friends’ told me to do, pursuing my fortunes on my terms. I did not deserve God’s welcome home. I did not expect his embrace, or his joy on my return. But there he was, ready and waiting to adopt me back into the family.

The love story that is adoption compelled me to adopt three children into my family. There is nothing they can do that can stop me waiting for them to run back into my embrace.

May you, too, be inspired to appreciate, and perhaps mirror, God’s adoption love story.