When I look at my son I am taken back a couple of years and reminded of how I longed to be a father so that I could better understand God as Father. I believed that I would have a better understanding of His love for me if I was able to look at my own child and experience the love of a father, as the father.

It has nearly been 3 years, and God has allowed me glimpses into His love for me through my love for my son in ways that I could never have imagined. Just today my son fell into the pool and as I reached into the water,  looking at his little body gasping and grasping for anything that could save him, I was again staggered by the thought that the urgency and determination that I expressed in pulling my son out of the water didn’t even compare to the desire that He has to reach down and save us.

Befitting of this realisation is that it happened on the Easter weekend, the single most important yearly event in the lives of all Christians.

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:8

I cannot understand the love of a God who would allow his Son to die, but I can understand the love of a father who would do anything so that his son would be saved.

So this is where we are a family at the moment. We have received so much, but we find ourselves challenged to express the love that was given freely to us, to others. Daily I find my heart is breaking for the things that break His and that mostly involves how his little children, the most innocent and helpless, find themselves hurt, abandoned and oppressed on a daily basis. I cannot stand by!

According to UNICEF 25% of children, or 3.9 million, are living in South Africa are orphans, imagine the challenges these children will face in the future when we find ourselves in a situation where 25% of adults have come from a position of abandonment. Only 500000 of this 3.9 million are seen as wards of the state, leaving 3.4 million still wondering, where is the hope of the world? If we were to take the number of adoptable children and then estimate how long it would take to have these children placed into loving families, based on the current rate of adoptions in South Africa, we’re looking at 200 years and that’s if we ignore the fact that more children are being born daily and that some of these children will never be adopted because after age 7 their chances drop hugely.

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