I will be your God throughout your lifetime—until your hair is white with age. I made you, and I will care for you. I will carry you along and save you. ISAIAH 46:4 (NLT)

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Our unofficially-adopted-but-just-as-much-loved daughter and her family are in the process of fostering to adopt a baby girl. This is a complicated process. Describing it here would take too long and would likely irritate you to no end or make you really, really angry. The worst thing about the whole process is someone else who has not cared for this precious baby girl since she came home from the hospital may end up with custody one day. 

So, if you were in our daughter’s situation, how attached to this little one would you become? Would you allow your heart to fully embrace her, love her, and count her as your own in spite of the possibilities? Or would you love her a lot, but not quite completely just in case a judge sends her to someone else?

A few years ago, our son took his dog to California with him. His dog lived with us for a long time while he was training or deployed overseas in the Marines. Once Trip left for the Left Coast, Ollie the Border Collie was alone and lonely. My bride started looking at pictures of puppies online. Inevitably, this led us to a nose-to-nose meeting with a family of black puppies. We came home with the one who had one white foot. She looks like she stepped in a bucket of paint. 

Never shop for puppies unless you plan to get one. Never foster to adopt without giving your whole heart to the child. 

Our Father in heaven does not hedge his bets or protect his heart against our possible rejection of his wooing, pursuing love. Listen to what he says in this verse:

I will be your God throughout your lifetime—until your hair is white with age.

Our Father in heaven loves us now and will love us always. We are perfectly loved by him before our birth (see verse 3), as newborns, toddlers, children, adolescents, young adults, middle-age adults, and all the way through the end of our days, and yes, forever beyond. He does not long for those days when we taking our first steps and speaking our first words. He does not wish we were young and athletic and artistic and learning to express his good gifts to us. He does not pine for days long past when we were finding our footing and accelerating into meaningful work. 

Mr. Rogers used to say and sing, “I like you just the way you are.” Multiply that by infinity. That’s how much God loves you.

I made you, and I will care for you.

He who holds the owner’s manual to our lives knows precisely what we need when we need it. As Sam in the book and movie Holes is fond of saying, “I can fix that.” Our Father in heaven can fix our broken lives like a good, good father can fix his child’s toys. 

I will carry you along and save you.

We stop carrying children all too soon. They learn to run and run they do. There are some rather large children who still enjoy being carried at times. As adults, we do not like being carried often. Most of the time when we are, it is not a good thing. Even so, there are moments when we want and need our Father in heaven to carry us. We need healing, hope, strength, deliverance, salvation. Remember his promise: “I will carry you along and save you.”

How can you know you are becoming more like our Father in heaven? When you give your heart completely to a child a court may take away from you, you are becoming more like him. When you woo and pursue the highest and best for another in spite of their rebellion or rejection, you are becoming like him. When you carry others when they cannot carry on, you are becoming more like him. 

And when you have cared and carried all you can, he carries on. 

I will be your God throughout your lifetime—until your hair is white with age. 
I made you, and I will care for you. 
I will carry you along and save you.

A promise God made. A promise God will keep. He loves you just the way you are. He always will.

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I will carry on in God’s love and God’s strength until he once again carries me home.

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Our Father, among the most precious of promises ever promised is this verse. Thank you for speaking these words of love and life to us. Make us big enough to embrace this truth. Make us more like you in expressing it to others. Amen.