Working Along The Way

See the author’s photo with all those road signs in the background?

No, we did not make her stand out in traffic with her aluminum walker.

Yesterday as we worked on Barbara White’s Along The Way series (divided that huge file of pages into four books of 200+ pages each), my daughter-in-law, Helen, an accomplished graphic artist, engineered an author’s photo for the back cover of the books.

No famous newspaper columnists were harmed in this experiment. Barbara was actually standing in front of a flowering bush when Helen did the headshot.

Helen also designed a new logo for my book publishing endeavor:

That’s a single photo! Now I can insert this logo with one click of my mouse instead of the tedious, frustrating, hair-pulling process I’ve been going through to space this thing on the back cover of my books.

It pays to ask for expert help.

Just a single click now — WHEEE!

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Enough giddiness. Here’s Barbara’s guest blog column for today:

We’re All Adopted

One day in a fit of adolescent anger, in rebellion against a stricture I was placing on his behavior, my son yelled that I had no right to tell him what to do because I wasn't even really his mother.

I surprised him. Without a moment's hesitation I put my hands on my hips, stared upward at him for eye contact (he's more than 6 feet tall) and said, "Oh, yes I am, and don't you forget it."

My son is adopted. He had picked what he thought might be a red herring of sufficient size to throw me off guard for a moment and let him drive home his version of how he should behave.

He may have been testing my feelings about him, too, consciously or unconsciously.

But fortunately I had already thought that through. I know that adoption made him really my son.

And he understood my answer, for he was grinning as he stalked off into his room.

Adoption is a legal matter. In the eyes of the law, the adopted person has all the status of a natural heir, a child of the body. It is a relationship bestowed by the new parent and certified by the courts.

Perhaps my son was wondering in his own mind and heart whether he was truly a son and heir, or whether if he rejected me, I would reject him. But adoption produces more than a legal offspring. It makes the one adopted a true child of the house and an heir in the full sense of those words.

When we become children of God, we do so through adoption. I wonder sometimes if we really feel like God's adopted children. Sometimes we may feel as unsure of our status as my own son did about his that day.

Jesus is God's Son, the only one born His Son; all the rest of us are His children by adoption.

But our adoption was paid for with more than the time, effort, and even money we pay when we adopt children. Our adoption fee was shed by Jesus on the cross.

Would you pay that much to adopt a child?

Jesus compared human and heavenly fathers. Earthly fathers would give their children good things out of what they had to give, he said. How much more would the heavenly father give to his.

When I stand and yell at God that I'm not really His child, it's out of fear that I might not be His child, that I might, somehow, have fallen out of the family.

But I know my son is my son.

And I know I am His child.