Filled: Devotions for a Foster Parent's HeartSýnishorn

Day Five

Scripture: Colossians 3:23-24, Psalm 11

I lugged—along with his little body—the monitor that alerted me when his heart stopped beating. I carefully applied leads and snapped on wires. I used coconut oil to gently lift old adhesive from his translucent skin. I bolted from the bed dozens of times each night to the tune of his ear-piercing alarm, which rang with each skipped heartbeat and stopped my heart as well.

A judge decided I wasn’t needed anymore. A worker I’d never met picked him up with a “Welp, time to get going.” A mom I would never meet left me uneeded. A child I’d loved, lost sleep for, labored over would never remember me.

You have your own unseen, unappreciated, unthanked moments of foster parenting, I just know it. You’ve devoted your days to others who—with preoccupied minds or blinded eyes or hardened hearts—see all you do but miss you completely.

I wish I could sit in the corner and watch you walk the miracle of motherhood (and I mean that in the least creepy way possible):

• You speaking patiently to that worker who didn’t show up and didn’t call. That is the grace of God at work in you!

• You looking with eyes of love at the child who screamed, “I hate you!” That takes an impossible, supernatural kind of love!

• You rocking the baby through the night while the rest of the house sleeps soundly. The way you serve is beautiful and important!

• You answering Mom with kindness when she comes at you with accusation. That is Jesus at work in you!

I wish I could see and celebrate these things. But I don’t have to. Because it is all seen by the Audience of One Himself. “It is the Lord Christ you are serving” (v. 24 ESV), and He misses nothing. Each gentle answer spoken in love, every brave battle for your child’s best, the dishes and diapers and dialogues, all the ways you give and serve and love are done not (only) for the faces in front of you but for the Father above you. This is a way you “offer your [body] as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God” in “true and proper worship” (Rom. 12:1).

“God is not unjust; he will not forget your work and the love you have shown him as you have helped his people” (Heb. 6:10). Because He is just, God is unable to miss all that you do for Him as you do for others. I hope your people thank you. I hope you are honored and appreciated. But I wouldn’t, you know, count on it. So, in everything you do, do it “for the Lord and not for [them]” (Col. 3:23 ESV). His seeing eyes, His just remembrance, His promise to “reward each of us for what we have done” (Rom. 2:6 CEV) are sure.

The hard and the mundane—God sees it all. I wish I could be there cheering you on, but you don’t need me. You have the God of the universe watching you, and He doesn’t miss a thing. The Audience of One sees all that you do. He applauds it and He will reward it.