In her book, The Spirit of Adoption: At Home in God’s Family, Jeanne Stevenson-Moessner writes beautifully about the need for whole-church and whole-theology approaches to the care of vulnerable children.

In this passage she writes about some of her aims for writing:

‘there are so many possibilities for application of the biblical doctrine of adoption that it is as if the church has been given a new concept.

My goals in raising these possibilities are fourfold. First, I hope to embolden Christians to rely on a biblical, anthropological mirror to image themselves as beloved of God, as adopted sons and daughters.

Second, I want to encourage the Christian Church as a family of faith to develop its ecclesiology to include a healthy acceptance-of-differences among all its members as demonstrated by resilient and flexible families in our society who have adopted children and accepted dissimilarities.

Third, I desire to support those parents who deal daily with the joys and challenges of adoption. Adoptive families need a theology to sustain them, particularly when the way is arduous and laborious. Birth parents and adoptees need an expansive theological foundation to encompass the pain of relinquishment.

Fourth, I offer the book as a gift to adoptees in our nation of adoptees. Most important of all, adoptees should know they are not second-class citizens, bastard children, unwanted, or illegitimate, but born of the womb-love of God, swaddled in God’s mercy and compassion. In microcosm, they are the model, the measure of all of us in God’s family.’ (pp.115-116, writing out of a N. American context)

What do you think?