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The joy of being a foster parent
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Dear Editor,


I have contemplated sharing my testimony of the joys of foster parenting, through the newspaper, for some time now. I am certain that many of you reading this have experienced some of the same things that I will share here.


I grew up as the son of a great minister of God’s Word. I saw God’s undeniable hand at work in many family and church situations as a child. I memorized much of the Bible, and would share scripture with other people at times, as the Bible says we should do.


While the Bible did make sense to me as a younger man, that did not even scratch the surface to the perfect sense it now makes to me, at 42 years of age. It is my understanding that this is the difference between merely knowing of God and knowing God.


Shortly after we began fostering children, the words of the the Bible that I memorized as a child, began to “jump off of the pages” when I would read them. This is due to what Jesus said to his disciples in Matthew 18:5, “And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me.”


The Bible coming to life to me in this new/deeper way is explained in Hebrews 4:12 (NIV), when it says, “For the word of God is alive and active ...” Again, I knew that verse from memory, for many years but didn’t know it in the Biblical sense (being able to relate to it).


Now when I pick up the Bible, or study it on an internet Bible site, I can hardly stop reading/studying it. Jesus alluded to this, when he was ministering to the Samaritan woman at the well, in John 4:14 — “But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.”


As for the three precious boys that God blessed us to adopt through Foster Care of Georgia, they came to us with some of the typical issues that many foster children suffer from. Through prayer and God’s love, today they are all happy, healthy and handsome.


Every time one of them, or any other child in our care speaks to me, and I see in their eyes the total dependency that they place in me as their earthly “father,” I am reminded of the relationship that God desires with all of humanity.


As Psalm 103:13 (NIV) clearly expresses, “As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him,” I now cannot help but spend the rest of my life allowing God to make His Word relevant to others.


Allen Thomas
Guyton