In his book ‘The Greatest Secret – How being God’s children changes everything’, Krish Kandiah speaks of what he learnt through his family’s fostering and adoption journey. The thrust is that, through the fostering of a baby girl and the eventual adoption of her as his daughter, Krish realised more fully his own position in God’s family. He found adoption runs deep through the Bible and that realisation changed his perspective as a Christian. It was a timely reminder for me too.
I did, nevertheless, feel a small annoyance that Krish paints an almost utopian situation into which adoption brought his family. The book doesn’t speak adequately of emotions or issues which biological children within the family unit may have to work through when sharing their space. For example, he doesn’t wrestle with “What if my biological child, at some point in their life, struggles with the adoption as it may dilute their own financial inheritance?” Had that or a similar question been asked, then for sure it would have opened up a difficult chapter, but also a very beautiful spiritual lesson.
As a spiritual parallel question, if you’ve ever asked “How come those people get to go to heaven just the same as me?” then perhaps you need to dig deeper into how God’s family works. Be assured, I’m in no way aligning ‘those people’ with adoption or suggesting that biological children would always pose such a query. However, it’s a good question to explore.
Much of what Krish writes is about our worth in God’s eyes. And it’s good, solid truth. This value not based upon achievement or accolade but rather simply upon status. Now, in a world where we often tolerate money and status suspiciously, especially when it is seen as underserved, it could seem odd for me to be promoting just that. In fact, it’s not odd, it’s radical. Yet Romans 8:15-17, almost casually, drops in this truth about disciples of Jesus.
And since we are his children, we are his heirs. In fact, together with Christ we are heirs of God’s glory.
Romans 8:17a
There’s nothing earned, nor anything deserved, as Jesus did all the ‘earning’ on our behalf at and through the cross. Father God simply says … if you accept my Son then I accept you make you my adopted child with all the benefits and inheritance that status comes with.
In this new life, it doesn’t matter if you are a Jew or a Gentile, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbaric, uncivilized, slave, or free. Christ is all that matters, and he lives in all of us.
Colossians 3:11
And the strikingly simple rule, in Colossians 3:11, is that there is no preference; that the status is available to all – Everyone, हर कोई, Tout le monde, Mổi người, Todo el mundo, Alle, Watu wote – to name just a few. Did you guess them all?
As in the adoption of a child it’s the adoptive parent’s decision to bless and give the status of ‘my daughter’ or ‘my son’ to the child. So if I were to consider the privilege of my status in God’s Kingdom and then, looking on, apply the same criteria as the world does I would be sure to cry “Unjust!” – at myself and at God. I mean, who wouldn’t? And right there I have answered the question about ‘those people’. I have realised that I am one of them. We don’t deserve our standing in God’s family as it is simply un-earnable. So let’s not slip into attempting to do that.
When doing ceases only being remains. Where being is embraced then whatever is done, or not done, comes only from that surrender.
A Hard Day’s Rest
What if my doing is subconsciously rooted, not in the security of being a child of the most high God, but in the insecurity of keeping myself happy, or pacified? I don’t mean selfish acts or some indulgence but the nagging need to quell the anxiety of ‘I must do something, I must achieve something to prove my worth’. It’s this which needs to cease.
Instead, let go the restless hands and grasp the status which your adoption brings: Like a friend of mine, who once got a seat on a flight because he cheekily told the booking clerk “I’m a son of the King!” Now the king in my friend’s mind was of course Jesus, but the country he was in revered status and royalty so highly that without further question my friend was given a seat on the aircraft.
You see, Being gives us both security and access. So imagine what it would be like if all, and I mean everything, of what I ‘did for God’ was a response to my secure and privileged status in Him? And, as Romans 12 instructs us, works are a response to the Father’s love, not a petition to a god who needs his attention grabbing.
And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him. Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.
Romans 12:1-2
To end this piece, let’s consider a scene from the 2015 Disney production of Cinderella. After the captain’s persistent searching, Cinderella has been found, and humbly dressed in her simple clothes and flat shoes, she walks downstairs from her attic to present herself to the prince. As she pauses at a full-length mirror, the narrator, the Fairy Godmother, ventures “Would who she was, who she really was, be enough? … This is perhaps the greatest risk that any of us will take. To be seen as we truly are.”
Shortly after we find Cinderella’s prince did not care to know her talents, her wealth, nor her achievements. What he did care for was to find the owner of the foot which fitted a lost shoe. All Cinderella had to be was herself, which was of course, was all she could be. Needless to say, that was enough because that is who the prince loved.
Let’s take our cue from Cinderella; take that greatest of risks, find our being and respond from a place of rest in Father God’s hands.
And My House 
Thanks for this!
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