Confession #60: I am off the charts

I know that it is not uncommon to compare the adoption of an orphaned child to the adoption of sinners by God, but they are both incredible truths and cannot be said too much.

We all like the idea of being off the charts. When I played basketball in high school, I wanted my vertical to be off the charts. Anyone who writes a book would like to see their sales off the charts. I have met a few people who have test scores that are off the charts.

When my brother took his newly adopted son to the doctor the week he brought him home from Ethiopia, Jaden was off the charts.

His growth chart.

The pink and blue growth charts are a staple at every pediatrician’s office. Your child has one whether or not you have ever noticed it. Doctors use it as way to make sure your little one is healthy and that they are growing. Lack of appropriate growth might be indicative of poor nutrition or some other health problem.

When refering to something as being “off the charts” we usually mean that something exceeded our expectations. In Jaden’s case, he was so small that he did not even make it onto the chart.

My brother and I are both surgeons, so its imperative to talk about the growth chart. Neither of us understand cute very well. I do not comprehend the language of dimples and chubby legs, but numbers and percentages make incredible sense.

When he was telling me that his new son’s height and weight did not even register on the growth chart as represented for normal American children, it reminded me of what our adoption by God is like.

When Jesus chose to adopt us and callled us into his family maybe he took us to God, the great physician, to get a check up. Perhaps he put us on a righteousness scale. Then he might have pulled out a tape measure to evaluate our good works.

As he plotted the results I am sure we were off the charts too.

The sum total of our righteousness and good works would be way below the first percentile.

The good news, though, is that Jesus was all for the adoption going through in spite of how unfit we were. He brought us in his family. He made us his children. He was so committed to this act, that he suffered an execution so that he could make it happen.

Being Christians does not make us more lovable, it just means that we are loved incredibly by a generous father.

And we should mimic him. We should be like him.

Are you off the charts?