The Paperwork That Changed Everything

In 2019, a couple from Nashville named David and Maria Chen finally walked out of a county courthouse in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, carrying their three-year-old daughter, Liya, for the first time as her legal parents. For two years, Liya had lived in an orphanage — fed, sheltered, but belonging to no one. She had a cot number, not a family name. The adoption papers changed her status completely. She went from ward of the state to heir of everything the Chens had built together.

But here is what David still talks about when he tells the story. It was not the legal documents that moved him. It was the moment three weeks later, in their kitchen back in Nashville, when Liya stumbled on the tile floor, skinned her knee, and for the first time cried out not in Amharic, not for a caretaker, but one word — "Daddy!"

That is Galatians 4:4-7 in a single syllable. Paul tells us that God sent His Son at just the right time, born under the law, to redeem us from the law's custody — not so we could become better-behaved orphans, but so we could receive the full rights of sons and daughters. The Almighty did not hand us a rule book and wish us well. He gave us His Spirit, and that Spirit does something no legal document ever could — it teaches our hearts to cry out "Abba, Father."

You are no longer a cot number. You are an heir.