Meet Elizabeth ("Izzy") Jacobson, the daughter I adopted at her request during our church's recent Covenant Pines Family Retreat.
Like Shawn Erickson, already noted, Izzy approached me early on, thinking of her father who had obligations that kept him home while we were away. "I miss my dad," she said, with that wonderful smile of hers. "Will you be my father this weekend?"
Would I ever! What a honor! Who could resist? Far more was involved than even Izzy knew. Christians are a family beyond our families, offering each other comfort, home away from home, the sense of security we all need from life's beginning to its end. Bryan J. H. Leech, a retired Covenant pastor out west, celebrates that reality in his wonderful hymn, "Come, Share the Lord" (The Covenant Hymnal: A Worshipbook, No 568). "No one is a stranger here, everyone belongs.... We are now a family of which the Lord is head; though unseen he meets us here in the breaking of the bread....
Izzy took me in as her father, and I took her in as my daughter, all because of Christ. And the weekend secured us both in our human longings--she for her dad and me for my children. Thank you, Izzy, for being who you are and allowing me to be someone special for you! God used you to minister to me, ministering to you.
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