Previously, in Divine Appointment – Part One, I tried to build some frame work around the idea that God ordains everything that happens in our lives. He ordained what you had for breakfast and that you are reading this right now. Since writing the first part of this topic, I’ve decided that I must add the new post: “Divine Appointment – Appendix”. This new “appendix” post (to be posted next) will be more scripture to enforce this belief.
My fascinating divine appointment went like this…it was actually a series of divine appointments.
My job requires me to attend tradeshow conferences several times a year where I travel to places around the western US to attend classes and network with clients. This networking process is something that I enjoy because I get to know new people who have interesting stories. One person with an interesting story is a civil engineering client I have known for about five years now. I’ll call him Dennis for the purposes of this post. Dennis and his wife have two biological children and two adopted children. I know this information because I did an interview with him for a project in Santa Fe, NM several years ago and we spent most of the day working together. Typically at events like this you get to know each other, but the personal information is limited. Limiting personal information exchange is usually recommended because often people have radically different lives and can completely disagree on important issues. This can and will strain professional relationships.
I have always been taught to not mix work with religion or politics. I’ve never been good at following this rule since I am passionate about my relationship with Jesus Christ and because I am a political junky. I am, however, always careful to not overstep the bounds of professionalism.
During this trip with Dennis years ago, I learned a bit about my associate’s adoption and the process they went through. This was very interesting to me because my wife, Maria, and I have been very open to the idea of adoption since we were dating. I told Dennis that someday I’d like to talk to him about his adoption in more detail.
Flash forward to August of 2009, the scene of a powerful divine appointment. I was sitting in my Pastor’s office just after our weekly men’s prayer group talking about how Maria and I really feel that God is calling us to add to our family. We were talking about getting pregnant, but we have had complications in the past so I was expressing my concerns. He asked a very innocent question: “have you guys ever considered adoption?” Well, of course we had, but not like we are now. I spent the next couple hours in my pastor’s office talking about adoption as a beautiful picture of the gospel – how God adopts us into his family, how he pulls us out of the orphanage of the world and our sin. We watched videos on the together for adoption website (www.togetherforadoption.org) and some others as well as discussion Russell Moore’s new book, Adopted for Life, (www.russellmoore.com) which I took home with me that afternoon. I had never had God speak to me so powerfully in such a wonderful way. My heart was broken and reset on God’s new agenda for me.
I can’t tell the whole story of how God has given us a heart for adoption at this point because it will take up too many inches of blog space. Maybe I’ll post on that another day. I’ll sum it up here simply as Maria and I are now looking into which agency we are going to use to adopt.
…Continued in Divine Appointment – Part 3.
by Keller Hackbusch
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