What I Learned from the New Kid

We have a new addition to our household. We have a new kid. No, not a baby and to be honest he really isn't in the household. The new kid is actually in the back yard. As most of you know we have show goats and we have a one week old kid that we are bottle feeding. Peanut, as we call him, was two days old when he came to live with us. He has a twin brother as well. Our neighbor raises goats and peanut is actually his goat. You see he and his brother were born just minutes apart, but for some odd reason Peanut's mother, who my children call petunia, rejected him. She will feed his brother just fine, but walks away when peanut tries to nurse. For the first two days Peanut's owner held the mother down and made her let him nurse. She was not happy about this. I am not a goat expert, however, I have learned a thing or two about goats in the last year we have been raising them. Even people who have raised goats for more years than I have been alive, though, do not know why goats sometimes do this. The wierd part is that on occasion goats will adopt another goat's kid, but on other ocasions they will reject thier own. Weird!!!

I was commenting on how strange this was, but it was just another difference between the animal kingdom and human beings. My son asked me what I meant by this and without thinking I said that human beings do not reject thier babies. My 11 year old son said, yes they do!! He has been reading "A Child Called It" which is about one of the worst cases of child abuse ever reported. It is written by the survivor of said child abuse. Anyway, I had to admit that I was wrong sometimes children are rejected by thier parents. Sometimes this is overt, in child abuse, abandonment and other such things. Sometimes the state has to come in and take the child away to keep them safe. However, sometimes human beings covertly abandon thier children, but simply withholding the love that they need. In this case the state does not step in and take the child away, but the child is still in need of surrogate parents.

We are serving as a surrogate parent to the little kid. He needs milk, not too much and not too little and as a goat he also needs socialization. Sometimes we are called to be surrogate parents to children whose parents are not or cannot meet thier emotional and spiritual needs. As Christians we need to be open to these oppurtunities when they come around. Perhaps there is a child in your community who would come to church, but his parents do not want to take him or her. Perhaps if they were given a ride, then they would find a place of full acceptance and love. we all need to be loved unconditionally.

Being a surrogate parent or as I prefer a spiritual parent to another child is risky. You can come to care for them very much. They may not know how to respond to unconditional love. They may reject you, they may reject God. They might get hurt along the way and you might feel the hurt they feel at home. That's okay it is well worth the risk.

Perhaps we should all look for the children around us who need to know unconditional love. Perhaps we should also look for the adults that need this as well. Either way unconditional love and acceptance is a gift from God. We as Christians need to share God's gift with others, especially the abandoned children.