In my opinion, the greatest story ever told is the gospel. I love to look at the Bible as a whole; as one story. God created the world and it was perfect. No babies died, infertility did not exist, and there was no pain or sin. It was beautiful…exactly how the Creator had imagined it. He gave us the gift of free will so that we could CHOOSE whether we wanted to love Him or not, because forced love is not real love after all. Unfortunately, with free will came the danger of sin, and we chose sin over Him the first chance we got. When sin entered the story, it ruined God’s perfect world. It brought pain, shame, death, and tragedy. The rest of the story follows God’s sweet plan to pursue us and save us and bring us back to perfection. His plan centered around His one son, Jesus, who He sacrificed to save the world. The Bible follows Jesus’ genealogy from the beginning, generation after generation, all the way up to Joseph. I love that the genealogy leads right up to Joseph who was not Jesus’ biological dad, but his adoptive father. Why have I never thought of this before? Jesus was adopted and raised by Joseph. God had only one son, one offspring on earth, one example of His family on earth. God could have created any family situation for the perfect God-man, and the one that He chose was adoption. He could have planned it any way He wanted and He chose to include adoption in His son’s life story. How cool is that?

And not only did God use adoption to tell the greatest story in the world, He used infertility as well. Many years before Jesus was born, his forefathers struggled to conceive and tasted the despair of infertility. Jennifer Saake writes in her book Hannah’s Hope:

Infertility took center stage in God’s account of history as the establishment and continuation of the Israelites seemed to be in question. Abraham was one hundred years old and Sarah ninety when their child of promise was finally born (Gen 17:17). Isaac, in turn, prayed for his barren wife, Rebekah, before God placed twins within her womb (Gen 25:21). One of those boys, Jacob, also went on to taste fertility challenges. While he had twelve sons, only two came from his beloved wife, Rachel, who struggled through years of infertility, both “primary” (never giving live birth) and “secondary” (unable to conceive or carry to live birth after at least one prior successful pregnancy.)

God used the struggles of infertility and the beauty of adoption in His most important story, His son’s story of redemption. If you are struggling with infertility, working through an adoption, or placing your baby for adoption, He SEES you. He sees your pain and your fear and your doubt. He is using it to create an amazing story of redemption in your own life. He is orchestrating it right now, working for you, gradually restoring your hope. Don’t give up! Be courageous and let Him work out your story like He worked out His son’s. After all, the best story in the history of the world started out a lot like yours and it ended with triumphant life.