Please welcome Jedd Medefind to the Show Hope blog. Jedd is the President of the Christian Alliance for Orphans. As we spend this month focusing on Adoption Aid, Jedd joins us to talk about the transforming power of love for orphans. Give to Show Hope’s Adoption Aid program to be a part of this life-changing transformation!
Here’s a simple truth I see embodied virtually every time I observe Christians who’ve opened their lives to children in need of families: love for orphans transforms.
When Christians reflect God’s love for the fatherless, no one remains the same.
It changes the lives of children, to be sure. But it also changes adults, as we are drawn beyond persistent self-absorption to a costly, vibrant faith. It changes families that enter into the joy and challenges of mirroring God’s love in action together. It changes entire churches, as they grasp God’s father heart more deeply and see it reflected in their community life. Finally, it changes a watching world as it sees the Gospel made visible.
There’s a place for every Christian in this journey. Some adopt. Some foster. Some mentor. Some support work overseas. Some babysit or run errands or act as surrogate grandparents.
When my wife and I were adopting our third daughter, we saw this reality lived out in the financial help that several families offered us, unprompted.
Their gift to us was far more than financial. It told us that our adoption wasn’t just the undertaking of an isolated family, but of the church body as a whole. They reminded us that this was a journey—both in the costs of adoption and in all that would follow—that an entire community could (and must!) walk together.
Ultimately, their gifts became for us both an affirmation and a deeper intertwining of the family of God.
In short, their sacrificial involvement in our adoption changed things. It wove these other couples into our daughter’s story, so that now she’ll always be ours in part because of them. This knit us together as friends like almost nothing else could. And in the process, both their outlook and ours subtly changed and grew—on everything from our personal relationship to the beauty of the church when we truly bear each other’s burdens.
All this through a handful of unheralded financial gifts. Love for orphans transforms.
Jedd Medefind serves as president of the Christian Alliance for Orphans, a coalition of more than 100 Christian organizations and network of churches. Prior to this role, Jedd served in the White House as a Special Assistant to President George W. Bush, leading the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. He recently released the book UPENDED: How Following Jesus Remakes Your Words and World. Jedd and his wife, Rachel, live in California with their five children: Siena, Marin, Eden, Lincoln and Phoebe.
