Have you ever looked up a definition of a word and they use a version of the word to define itself?

So it is with the word adoption. Truth be told it bothers me when they do that.

The fun starts, however, when we look at the origin of the word, which for adoption, is Latin.

Ad-optio = Ad means to and optio means choose, so adoption means to choose.

Just under half of our animals on the farm are rescues, adopted. Some come from our family farm in Michigan, and one pure breed was purchased because we wanted a guarantee what we were getting. The one we have purchased has proven to be the most challenging.

Those we’ve been given or have adopted have been great. All of our animals are part of the Shiloh family.

In the New International Version of the Bible, adoption is found five times. Each time it uses the word adoption in this phrase: “adoption to sonship.”

The animals we have adopted and rescued are constant reminders of who we are in Christ and through Christ; we are adopted sons and daughters of the Creator of the universe, God.

In the hustle and bustle of this busy world we need all the reminders we can get, as everything pulls and tugs at us and distracts us from who we really are, and remembering always that we are but aliens in a hostile world.

The pure breed animal we purchased that has been a pain? So have we been purchased by Christ, in fact Scripture tells us we are not our own:

1 Corinthians 6:19-20 (NIV)

¹⁹ Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own;²⁰ you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.

How tightly we like to hang on to things, including ourselves, when in fact we belong as co-heirs to our Father in heaven.

Matthew chapter 6 tells us to store up treasures in heaven and not on earth. It would probably do us good to understand what treasures in heaven mean.