Dad Story, Part 7: Coronavirus and Justice / Righteousness / Steadfast Love

Disclaimer:  I'm writing a tale of our journey to adopt our third daughter who is our fifth child.  Yes, we're crazy.  No, I haven't won the argument to get an Armored Personnel Carrier to carry all these people.  And yes, I'm writing it from a dad's perspective.  I hope it helps some dad out there who wonders what in the world God has put on his plate.

As we have continued the pursuit, it hasn’t been easy.  Currently, coronavirus (COVID-19) is ravaging China and beginning what looks like an unabated run across the globe.  We have videos of some pretty horrible conditions in China and some fears about what is happening (or will happen) in the future in the U.S. and what travel will look like.  

I was walking and praying one morning and the verse popped in my head:  don’t let the rich man boast in his riches, the wise man boast in his wisdom, the strong man in his strength, but let him who boasts boast in this: that he understands and knows Me, the LORD, who exercises justice, righteousness, and steadfast love on the earth (Jer. 9.23-24). 

So that’s where I take my fears these days.  I pray that Jesus will show up and exercise some justice in some places, making a way for a little girl in an orphanage in China to find a home in the suburbs of Houston.  I pray that there will be some righteousness worked on the earth, the making right of things that aren’t:  like a threatening pandemic that is bad in its own right but a moral issue for our family as it keeps us from our daughter.  And I pray that God will show both here and there, to us and to her, His steadfast love by preparing us for her and her for us, even now knitting our hearts together.

I don’t always have a good control of my fear.  I certainly don’t have a good control over the responses of superpowers to the happenings in the world.  But I know a love that conquers all of that.  It even conquered death itself.  And I can trust in that kind of love and the One who gives it.