Fields of the Fatherless

I recently read Fields of the Fatherless by Tom Davis and found it incredibly helpful and encouraging as we continue our adoption process. Tom is the founder of Children’s HopeChest (www.hopechest.org), a child-advocacy ministry that focuses on the needs of orphans and widows in Eastern Europe and Africa. Whether you’re adopting or not, this book is a great read for understanding God’s heart and compassion for the needy of the world.  Here are some highlights.

• “To deprive the fatherless of justice doesn’t simply mean denying them a proper hearing in court. It means not welcoming them into your home, not helping them when they are cold and hungry, not listening when they cry out. In other words, the sure way to deprive the poor of justice is to do nothing.” (p. 55)
• “If only 7% of professing Christians around the world responded, every single orphan in the world would have a home.” (p. 81)
• Henry Nouwen’s definition of compassion: “The word compassion is derived from the Latin words pati and cum, which together mean “to suffer with.” Compassion asks us to go where it hurts, to enter into places of pain, to share in brokenness, fear, confusion, and anguish. Compassion challenges us to cry out with those in misery, to mourn with those who are lonely, to weep with those in tears. Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless. Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human.” (p. 111)
• “How do we overcome fear? We start by making others’ pain a priority in our lives. People are eternal; fear is not.” (p. 119)