Today we live in a culture which imagines it has inalienable rights to just about everything, including children. Who cares what your arrangements or conditions are: single, gay, straight, fertile or infertile, you have a 'right' to a child.
This attitude ignores God's revealed will (children are for married couples alone) and his secret plans (God has wonderful purposes even when this world's fallen biology fails a married couple).
If we are not careful we believers can end up demanding of God what he has nowhere promised in a fallen world and setting up nothing short of an idol - an 'object' (in this case a child) which alone, we say to ourselves, will give us the happiness we seek (and today imagine we 'deserve').
What happens if in the good - nay, infinitely good - providence of God we find ourselves infertile (husband or wife or both)? Few can respond better to this sad experience than a Christian infertile woman who has been through the experience with tears in her eyes, an open Bible in her hand and just as importantly a humble, a teachable and open heart.
Listen to Rosaria Champagne Butterfield:
"Over the years, I have listened to too many grieving women who interpret their infertility as a sign that they cannot fulfill their God-given role as a life-giver. One woman recently said to me: "I dreamed of having six children. When I didn't get pregnant, I felt betrayed by God because my dream is crushed." I find these conversations so fruitful for Christ-centred redirection. God is not crushing the dreams of parenthood when he deals the card of infertility. God is asking you to crush the idolatry of pregnancy to be sure. And he is saying: "Dream My dreams, not yours! Currently, there are 7,000 children in Virginia who are waiting for adoption. Give him your dreams, and watch them become cosmic Christian doctrine. My role as a life-giver is not in any way compromised by my infertility. My ability to see the world with spiritual eyes is sharpened by it, however." (The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert).
This is great godly wisdom. What wonderful opportunities Christians have to adopt children, as Joseph did Jesus (so fully adopted that the link Jesus had to David and Abraham is through Joseph's line, not Mary's.)
Adoption in Scripture, is no second-class child-provision arrangement. Thank God, he is a Champion of Adoption. Thank God that he did not reject us when we turned our backs on him but adopted us into His Family and set for Christians everywhere a wonderful example.
Just imagine if Christians by the thousand took up adoption (or fostering) - what a wonderful effect that would have on our nation - and those kids.
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