My nearly 14-year-old daughter and a couple of her friends like to put interesting polls on their blogs:

• “What language should I study in high school?”

• “Which is the best Anne of Green Gables book?

• “Is hot chocolate best when it includes marshmallows, whipped cream and sugar sprinkles?”

Readers post their votes, making interesting reading on the blogs.

So, it’s our turn. The adoption-by-grace’s poll question:

What kind of articles would you like to read in ‘this month’ articles?

Here are some ideas:

• Book reviews
• Adoption and child advocacy news
• Wong family personal stories
• Country profiles: What’s going on with vulnerable children in different countries
• Biblical reflections about following the Lord in the midst of caring for children.

Please let us know! Send ideas to phil@adoption-by-grace.com.

We eagerly await your responses!

In the meantime, here’s a quote for you to chew on. I’m reading Dynamics of Spiritual Life by Richard Lovelace, which explores the relationship between spiritual renewal (understanding and believing deeply in the gospel) and its natural outworking in the church’s life, including fruitful prayer and mission. It includes interesting history about periods when the church brought significant improvements in justice to the world in which it lived. One of these times was early 19th century in Great Britain. One of the spiritually renewed and energized men of this time was the Earl of Shaftesbury, who “spent his life and his rather slender means” on bringing relief to the British working class, including work to limit the abuses of child labor.

Lord Shaftesbury’s view of this kind of work:

“No man, depend upon it, can persist from the beginning of his life to the end of it in a course of generosity…unless he is drawing from the fountain of Our Lord Himself.”

When his son asked him how he could manage so many reforming initiatives at once, he answered:

“By hearty prayer to Almighty God before I begin, by entering into it with faith and zeal, and by making my end to be His glory and the good of mankind.”