I’m in the final stretch homeward after a week of travel. Can’t wait to see Rachel—and also four little, glowing faces just in time for their bedtime tonight.
I often feel the greatest privilege of orphan-related work is getting to pour yourself into something you know is very close to God’s heart—and seeing and knowing that heart more deeply in the process. A second greatest privilege, one might say, “is like unto the first.” It’s the people who share a passion for this work and the precious children themselves whom you get to know. I felt that blessing on this trip as much as ever.
There was the band of northwest Arkansas friends who put together the Idea Camp conference, and the amazing blend of people who participated; Alliance board member Corey Gordon, who lived the early years of his life on the streets of Korea before being adopted, and has become a true brother-in-arms in the cause of the fatherless; radio station owners and program hosts at the NRB convention willing to help the Alliance speak on behalf of orphans; a number of wise-humble-vibrant professors, writers, and advocates in the area of Lookout Mountain, Georgia; businessmen that want to use their entrepreneurism to help orphans.
CS Lewis described time with such friends as “the golden hours”—whether smoking a pipe by a glowing fire (as Lewis imagined) or in a Starbucks. And the conversation is made all the richer in that it arcs toward action: creative ideas and new partnerships that solve real needs and rally Christians to join the work.
When we’re tempted to think that skiing or golfing or a day spa are as good as it gets, we’re missing the really good stuff. The “fellowship of the rings” known by co-laborers in the cause of the fatherless is a reward like no other.