Baby Boy

Welcome to today's encouragement from Our Daily Bread. Our reading, titled Baby Boy, was written by Tim Gustafson. For more than a year, his legal name was Baby Boy.

Discovered by a security guard who heard his cries, Baby Boy had been abandoned, hours old and wrapped only in a bag in a hospital parking lot. Soon after his discovery, social services called the people who would one day become his forever family. The couple took him in and called him Grayson.

Finally, the adoption was complete and Grayson's name became official. Today, you can meet a delightful child who mispronounces his R's as he earnestly engages you in conversation. You'd never guess he'd once been found abandoned in a bag. Late in his life, Moses reviewed God's character and what he'd done for the people of Israel. The Lord set his affection on your ancestors and loved them, Moses told them in Deuteronomy chapter 10.

This love had a broad scope. He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing, Moses said. He is the one you praise. He is your God. Whether it's through adoption or simply through love and service, we're all called to reflect God's love.

That loving couple became the hands and feet God used to extend his love to someone who might have gone unnoticed and unclaimed. We can serve as his hands and feet, too. Today's Our Daily Bread devotional scripture reading is from Deuteronomy chapter 10 verses 14 through 22. To the Lord your God belong the heavens, even the highest heavens, the earth and everything in it. Yet the Lord set his affection on your ancestors and loved them, and he chose you, their descendants, above all the nations as it is today.

Circumcise your hearts, therefore, and do not be stiff-necked any longer. For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes. He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing.

And you are to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt. Fear the Lord your God and serve him. Hold fast to him and take your oaths in his name. He is the one you praise. He is your God who performed for you those great and awesome wonders you saw with your own eyes.

Your ancestors who went down into Egypt were seventy in all. And now the Lord your God has made you as numerous as the stars in the sky. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, have mercy on the fatherless. Please use us, the body of Christ, to provide whatever earthly needs they have. May they recognize your love for them and find wholeness in you. Thank you, Lord. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Thanks for listening today. I'm Stephen, and today's encouragement was provided by Our Daily Bread Ministries.