The Song...
The song I posted last night, When Love Takes You In, is one of the most beautiful songs I've ever heard. The first time I heard the song was at the 2002 Concert in Roanoke in February or March. I'm a rather stoic person in that I don't cry very often. In fact, I believe that when I heard this song at the concert last year it was the first time and only time I've ever cried due to a movie, song, etc. He said that he was inspired to write it after he and his wife adopted a child. The song has meaning both in the secular sense, relating to adoption, and in the spiritual sense, relating to our relationship with God.

The song refers to love taking you in... this is like the act a couple takes when they adopt a child... They're taking a child in with love, just as they would love a child of their own flesh and blood. I think that the most powerful part of this song is "When love takes you home and says you belong here / The loneliness ends and a new life begins / When love takes you in." Adopting an orphan doesn't mean that you love him/her any less than you would a child that you 'made' (for lack of a better term)... These children are brought into a home that loves them (or so it should be)... This is the life they know and will grow up knowing... Love has taken them in and given them a new life full of hope.

But this song is not only about physical adoption. The song has basis in three key verses:
* 1 John 3:1 - "How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him."
* John 14:18 - "I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you."
* Psalm 68:5-6 - "A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling. God sets the lonely in families, he leads forth the prisoners with singing; but the rebellious live in a sun-scorched land."

Just because God is not our physical father does not mean that he doesn't love us the same. Its hard to imagine a love so pure, so deep, so true... In the first stanza of the song, he talks about feeling as if noone is there for you - loneliness... That's what Psalm 68:5-6 refers to: God is there for the lonely... He has given us protection and provision, just as any loving parent would give their child. The loneliness ends... and our new life IN HIM begins when he took us in. God will NEVER stop loving us and there is not a thing that could cause his love to fail. "And this love will never let you go / There is nothing that could ever cause this love to lose its hold."

This is what Steven Curtis Chapman says about adoption (taken from the website of Shaohannah's Hope, the adoption 'agency' he and his wife founded):
Recognizing that adoption is a perfect picture of what God has done for each of us in making us His children through Christ, Shaohannah's Hope has been established to present and encourage adoption as a response to the Gospel. Psalm 68:5-6 tells us that as the Father to the fatherless, God delights in setting the lonely in families. It has been our experience that the scriptural mandate of caring for orphans, such as the one found in James 1:27, is really a wonderful invitation to experience God in a profound way by being a part of His sovereign plan for His precious children.

Working from these foundational truths, Shaohannah's Hope exists to enable children living without the love and hope of an earthly family to be adopted into "covenant homes." These families can provide not only love and support needed for this life, but also provide a child with the knowledge of God’s plan for his or her eternal life with a forever family called The Body of Christ.


"That's what God does, and it's His favorite thing to do," Steven says, "to take the lonely, the homeless, and put them in families."

Now, I'm far from being settled down and ready to start a family... trust me... I've never even been on a date before.... But, Adoption is such a miraculous and wonderful process that I want to adopt a child when I get ready to have a family once I'm married. God is like an adopted parent to us. He was always our Father in Heaven... before we became a Christian it was as if He was awaiting the adoption papers to go through. God has love for every human being... its just that once we become Christians - once "our adoption papers go through" - His love for us is INSURMOUNTABLE!!!