In 2016 a Santa Clara, CA man saved a total stranger from a burning car.
The car was on fire and the driver incoherent. Some onlookers watched in the parking lot while others recorded the whole thing on their phones. Only one person jumped in to help. His name was Aram.
After realizing the seriousness of the situation just a few yards ahead of him, he noticed everyone else was understandably moving away from the burning car - but he never stopped moving towards it.
Then with one swift move, Aram grabbed the man from behind the wheel and pulled him to safety. When asked later by reporters why he did it, Aram matter of factly responded, “Nobody was pulling him out. I figured if we don't, he's going die. So, why not me.”
We’ve heard Aram’s heroic story dozens of times. Change the names, the location and some aspects of the circumstances and the stories all carry that same iconic theme - someone decides in a sudden moment that the risk of not doing something is greater than the risk of doing it; that the danger of moving towards it is great, but not nearly as great as the danger of moving away from it. That’s the choice Aram was faced with that day - and the choice, to some extent, we’re all forced to make at some point in one way or another. Certainly, Aram knew the risks of what he was doing that day, but he also understood the costs of doing nothing at all. So, he moved towards the fire, not away.
The irony of perspective is that for some on the outside looking in, foster care seems too risky to do; yet, for those on the inside - having deeply felt the complexities of beauty and brokenness and joy and sorrow - the risks that come with not doing it are simply too great to ignore. The world around us to tells us to avoid, isolate and insulate ourselves from anything that’s potentially hard, uncomfortable or dangerous. We’re indoctrinated in all forms to set up the kind of life where we can live the rest of our days pretending like hard places and broken people don’t exist around us - in our city, around the world or even across the street. Make things as easy and comfortable as possible. At all costs.
Life is difficult and complex enough without compounding it with the brokenness and complexities of someone else’s story. It would be a whole lot easier if we simply avoided everything that was hard - if, like so many that day in Santa Clara, we stood by as onlookers, or better yet, backed away to as safe a distance as possible as quickly as we could.
But the gospel compels us to something entirely different.
The word “incarnation” literally means to assume human form. The doctrine of Christ’s incarnation speaks to God stepping into humanity, wrapping Himself in mortality and living completely and fully as both God and man. It’s most notably recognized at Christmas with the birth of Jesus, yet its implications are far more pervasive than just December 25th of every year.
All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call Him Immanuel” (which means ‘God with us’).
Matthew 1:22-23
The entire narrative of Scripture is about a God who is consistently and sacrificially moving towards hard places and broken people. He is a God of proximity. Since the moment sin first fracture the perfect union between God and man in the Garden of Eden He has been on a redemptive pursuit to be as close and near to us as humanly possible. His presence hovered over His people as a cloud by day and pillar of fire by night (Exodus 13:21) - “There He is out there.” His glory then indwelt the the tabernacle He instructed them to build (Exodus 40:34-38) - “There He is in there.” The prophets spoke of the Messiah who would be born through a woman (Isaiah 9:6), fulfilled in Matthew chapter 1 with Immanuel, God with us - “There He is right there.” Then, towards the end of His ministry, Jesus tells His disciples that a day is soon coming when He will leave, and in doing so the Holy Spirit will be sent to live inside of them. They understandably didn’t want Him to go, thinking that His presence next them was absolutely essential to their faith and lives. However, He says it will in fact be better if He leaves. Why? Because rather than living next to them He’s now going to live inside of them, and you can’t get any closer than that (John 14:15-31) - “Here He is, in me.”
The incarnation reveals much about who God is and what God does. It tells us He is a God of proximity who sees hard places and broken people and moves towards them, not away. It outlines the extravagant lengths He was willing to go to be “with us”, having wrapped Himself up in our brokenness, carried our brokenness to the Cross and been broken by our brokenness so that we don’t have to be broken anymore. God saw us in the burning car and moved towards us, not away. That’s what He’s always done. At all times and in all circumstances He is saying, “I see you where you are and I’m coming after you!” That’s the gospel.
Moving towards hard places is not just what we do; in light of the gospel, it’s who we are. We are the kind of people who move towards hard places and broken people because that’s exactly who Jesus has been for us. We move towards, not away, and when we do it says something true about who Jesus is in our lives. Our friends might look at us like we’re crazy, our families might look at us like we’re crazy, we might look in the mirror sometimes and ask ourselves why we’re being crazy - and everyone’s right! It’s crazy! It’s crazy that God would do this for us; and it’s crazy that He would then invite us to do it for others. It’s crazy because it screams completely counterintuitive to the way we’ve all been hard-wired to live - to avoid, isolate and insulate. It’s crazy, and beautiful, and ugly…and worth it. And if we’re honest, it’s a difficult thing for us to justify raising our hands in praise to a God that moves towards us in our brokenness while simultaneously using those same hands to push the brokenness of others away. We can’t do it, Church. We simply can’t. That’s not who we are.
Fear keeps a lot of good people away from a lot of great kids and families - and ultimately deprives everyone of the beauty that can only be found when we move towards those unique places of uncertainty and necessity - where we’re not sure how this whole thing is going to play out but we’re absolutely certain that we have to do something about it. We simply can’t not. This isn’t to say you should be careless and foolish. It is to say, however, that you should deeply and realistically assess the costs you will incur if you do foster, but never to the neglect of considering what it will cost these kids if you don’t. That’s the risk Aram took that day in the parking lot. It’s the risk we’re all forced to consider in some way at some point.
Sometimes our prayers for more “clarity” are answered with a call for more proximity. From a distance we say, “God show me the way!” and He responds with, “Just move closer and you’ll see.” And a lot of your questions about fostering are only answered through this kind of proximity. The closer you get the more you see and the clearer things become. You begin to see things you can never unsee, hear things you can never unhear, know things you can never unknow and then suddenly, nothing can ever be the same again. You simply cannot pretend it doesn’t exist anymore.
This is the power of the gospel in proximity.
Are you on the outside looking in, assessing the risk while watching the car burn? Jump in and do what needs to be done. Or, simply start by serving a family, going to an orientation class, attending an informational meeting or having coffee with a family that’s doing it. Hear their story. Just find a way to move closer - any way - and watch what happens through the power of proximity.
That’s what Aram decided to do that day in Santa Clara.
It’s a decision we’re all faced with at some point.
