I love this Mother Teresa quote:
If you judge people,
you have no time to love them.

I know I need to remember this - DAILY!

But...it really breaks my heart when whole communities of Christians - churches, even - fail to remember to LOVE...especially when people need it most.

Criticism never brings healing and it rarely prompts positive change.
Love and support and encouragement are part of helping people make it through tough times.

I recently read the paragraph below. It makes my heart ache at the same time it makes me happy to see someone speak up for this family.

"The adoption community can be small, so if you know this family, they desperately need your understanding and support after having made this extremely difficult decision.  Sometimes the adoption community ostracizes and shows a lack of understanding towards a family who has made a decision to find a new family for their children. We ask that you carefully refrain from anything except love and concern."

We have been THAT FAMILY. We know the pain...and we know God is sovereign!

Please...protect & defend & support & step into the messy lives of the people around you. They are worth the effort.

I would dare to suggest that we, as parents here in America, do such a thing - although in very subtle ways - on a daily basis. We hand our children over to the evils of this world to fit in with - to appease - those around us.
Why are we more concerned about "fitting in" than about pleasing the Lord...the one who created us and has the power to destroy us in an instant?!
If our children are our most precious and prized possessions, why do we treat them so flippantly...exposing them to a whole host of evils?
Are we okay with filling their minds with violence, sexual perversion, hatred and fears...just because our society offers it all up as acceptable?
Are we really okay with the murder of babies just because our society has decided a person is not really responisble for their intimacy decisions?
Are we okay with casual sexual relations for our children, despite the way it endangers their physical health and - worse - damages their mental and spiritual health?
If we think Lot was wrong or appalling, that he was acting in an unloving way toward his innocent virgin daughters, if we cannot imagine how he could have been willing to turn them out into that angry mob to be violently devoured...I think we should question what WE are doing with our children little by little each and every day.
If we think Lot should have protected his daughters even more than he attempted to protect the men/angels who were guests in his home, I would suggest that we do that with our children in the midst of the angry mob of society we live in right now.
Why not go against the grain and say, "NO" to media that is damaging and violent?
Why not say, "No" to social pressures that break us down and lead us to send our children out into dangerous or potentially dangerous situations?
Why not stand up to the evils in our world by protecting our children and pointing them to the truth and protection of our Creator who loves them so MUCH more than we do, MUCH more than we can ever even imagine?
God graciously gave us these children as gifts. They are loaned to us and we are responsible to raise them to love and fear the Lord, to know His word and to seek His will. Let's not lazily hand them over to a society that does not care for them at all, whose only desire is to quickly devour them.