In Adopted for Life, Russell Moore describes how he and his wife adopted two boys from an orphanage in another country. He states that the saddest part of the process was the eerie silence that enveloped his children’s orphanage. There were rows and rows of cribs but the only sound he heard was children sucking their thumbs and gently rocking themselves to sleep. They had learned that it was no use to cry out, for the overworked staff was too harried to come to their aid. So the children whimpered softly and buried their heads in their blankets.

Unlike these forlorn orphans, children of God have the privilege of crying out to a Father who hears us. Paul explains, “All creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. And we believers also groan . . . for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as His adopted children” (Romans 8:22-23).

Have you joined the lament of our fallen world? Do you cry out to God because of all the ways that our world is not the way it’s supposed to be? Do you beg Him to intervene for the children of divorce, for the victims of infidelity, pornography, slander, and greed? In these cases, “Abba, Father” is not the happy greeting of a contented kid, but the piercing wail of a hurting child who desperately needs his Daddy to step in and set this world aright.

It’s tragic to read of an orphan who never cries. But in some ways, we are like that orphaned child not knowing that God our Father was waiting to adopt us into His family. If you know that you’re God’s child and you’re troubled by the sin in our world, then do what comes natural to children—cry to Him.

NLT 365-day reading plan passage for today: Judges 14:1-20