Reflections of a Jazz Theologian

Down by the Riverside (p4)

America--Baskets, baskets everywhere.

There are 500,000 children waiting for homes in America's foster care system.  We don't half to travel half-way around the world we live in a country with a half-million orphans.

They are every age, ethnicity and background.  Notice that I said, "legally free."  That is, there are no legal encumbrances to their being adopted.  Unfortunately, there are far more children in the foster care system in various stages of the legal process.  Good-hearted social workers and advocates are working to reunite them with their family but when all plans fail they become legally free.

The good news is that they are in a basket--safe, floating, waiting...for you to come to the riverside.

Down by the Riverside (p3)

Parentless children is a global crisis with over 140 million orphans world wide.

One day, I received an email from a woman in our church about a little girl available for adoption in Ethiopia.  At that time my wife, Barbara, and I had four children.  Two boys and two girls--a complete symmetrical family.  As I skimmed the email I prayed that God would provide a home for this child and then deleted the email.  A while later the lady asked Barbara what she thought about the email.  Busted!  I told my wife that I thought our family was finished so I didn't see the need to forward the message to her.  I was wrong.

We entered the process of international adoption.  We were prepared for a long road but as we encountered one delay after another we began to wonder if the Lord was at work.  We prayed and sensed that perhaps we were to be open to adopting more than one child from Ethiopia.  After all, how could we travel half-way around the world to a country with 500,000 orphans and only bring back one!

We told our agency that if they could find another child we would be open.  They identified a little boy and we were off to Ethiopia...

After all, how could we be in a country with half a million orphans and not do all we could?

Do you know how many orphans there are in America?

Down by the Riverside (p2)

I think that she was down by the riverside to see if there was anything she could do.  Powerless to change her father's will and unable to stop the horror upstream she went down by the riverside and immersed herself in the problem.  With hope she sent her attendants walking along the shore in search of a miracle.

She hoped beyond hope that one of the little ones had survived. 

As she bathed she sought to subvert the system.  And the she saw the basket, had it brought to her and when the lid was opened she felt "sorry" the crying little one.  "Sorry," that is compassion from her womb.  It was then that she knew that she had to do something.

Have you been down by the riverside lately?

Down by the Riverside (p1)

"Then Pharaoh's daughter went down to the Nile river to bathe..."  (Ex. 2.5)

She went down to the river to bath.  Doesn't that seem odd to you?

Pharaoh's daugther, raised in royalty, was bathing in the NILE river?  Why would she do that!?

Sure bathing in the Nile was normal practice but it seems to me that given the circumstances she would have changed her routine.  She could have had her servants bring water to her in the palace instead of wading in the waters of the Nile...with all of the bodies of the dead babies floating nearby.

Pharoah had come up with a plan to exterminate the Hebrew slaves.  He gave the order, "Every boy that is born you must throw into the Nile..." (Ex. 1.22)  Within a generation the Hebrew slaves would be no more.

Could this be why Pharoah's daughter was down by the riverside wading in the water?