Podcast: How to Radically Pursue Justice While Living in the Suburbs (Amy DiMarcangelo)

April 22, 2024 by: Crossway

This article is part of the The Crossway Podcast series.

Living for God in the Midst of Everyday Life

In this episode, Amy DiMarcangelo discusses how our lives can often look relatively normal and comfortable, which can lead us to wonder if we are truly living and sacrificing for God as we are called to do. She shares her own story of learning what it means to live sacrificially for God in the midst of everyday life.

Go and Do Likewise

Go and Do Likewise

Amy DiMarcangelo

In Go and Do Likewise, Amy DiMarcangelo explores how the gospel compels Christians to extend God’s mercy in their everyday life—displaying his compassion, justice, generosity, and love to those who need it most.  

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | RSS

Topics Addressed in This Interview:

01:26 - Battling Materialism

Matt Tully
Amy, thank you so much for joining me again on The Crossway Podcast.

Amy DiMarcangelo
Thanks for having me.

Matt Tully
Today we’re going to talk about a dynamic that I know I’ve wrestled with before, and I think other Christians, especially Christians living in the US or in the West more generally, what does it look like for us to live faithful Christian lives, especially when it comes to pursuing justice and pursuing caring for the downtrodden? Scripture refers to them as the widows and the orphans and those who are oppressed in different ways. Sometimes it can be hard to feel like we know how to do that when we’re, for lack of a better phrase, when we’re living in the suburbs and surrounded by things that feel very normal to us but in the broad scope of the world are actually the exception oftentimes. You tell a story in the book about a trip that you took with your dad, when you were a teenager, that maybe was part of the beginning of this journey for you in thinking about this question and this dynamic that we sometimes wrestle with. I wonder if you could start us there by telling us what this trip was about and what it did to open your eyes to some of these issues.

Amy DiMarcangelo
My dad was going to be teaching at a pastor’s conference in India, and I went along to just sort of help with kids during that conference and work with an Indian ministry that does a lot of work with children and with people with disabilities. They’re really involved in what seems like every aspect of ministry in their local area. So I just went to work with the kids, but immediately what struck me was we flew into Mumbai, and there were just sprawling slums. We went past all those slums to a very nice hotel that we were put up in, and it just felt so upsetting at the time to think here I am in this nice setting, and I look out my window, and there are slums everywhere. It was so different from what I had been exposed to in the US. It’s not that I didn’t think there was poverty in the US, but we don’t have sprawling slums in the same way they exist in Mumbai. That was my first introduction to India, and then we went to a town where there was a mix of people being well-off and comfortable, but they did a lot of ministry among the disabled community, which can face a lot of marginalization and discrimination in India. They worked with kids who were either orphaned or coming from rural villages where they wouldn’t have received an education. And it was just so challenging to me to see my Christian brothers and sisters in India and how they were being so faithful in gospel proclamation, but their hand was also involved in so many areas of mercy and justice for the poor and needy in their area. And I just wanted to be a part of it. I was like, This is what I want for my life. I could just see the beauty of the gospel being lived out through my Indian brothers and sisters. So it’s sort of this culture shock when I come back to the US, where I am surrounded by people who love the Lord and who are sharing the gospel, but I also felt like, What’s the place for us in these suburbs? How do we care for the poor here? Because we’re missing something if we’re not doing that.

Matt Tully
And even the poor among us are often so much better off physically than the poor in other parts of the world might be.

Amy DiMarcangelo
Yeah. That’s definitely something to be aware of, that in some places poverty is going to show in that you can’t afford to pay for your electricity. And that’s a real trial. Whereas in other places they don’t even have the option of electricity. So it is important for us to realize that poverty will exhibit in sort of a different way based on where we are.

Matt Tully
One thing that really resonated with me about this story, as you tell it in the book, is just the feelings of guilt that you started to wrestle with while you were even on the trip but certainly once you got home. That’s something I would imagine many people—anyone who’s been on a short-term mission trip of some kind or has traveled internationally and been exposed to places where true poverty really does exist—it’s hard not to start to ask yourself, How is it okay for me to have things that maybe are very normal here in the US? A couple of cars for our family, to have a nice big TV, to go out to restaurants, and go on vacation occasionally. You can start to kind of wonder, especially as Christians, Is it okay for me to have these things and do these things when this need exists around the world? How would you describe those feelings that you had? You mentioned guilt once in the book—unpack that feeling that you were wrestling with.

Amy DiMarcangelo
I definitely came back struggling with guilt, and I think it’s something I continue to wrestle with. I’ve been given so much. How is this even fair that I’ve got multiple choices of clothes to wear, that I can eat out at a nice restaurant with my husband, that I can go on vacation, that my kids can do extracurricular activities. Meanwhile, there are other moms who can’t feed their kids. And so how do I reconcile those two things? And I think there’s a tension that we should feel, where on the one hand, we do have freedom to enjoy God’s good gifts. And I think that there was a season and a temptation for me to start to almost hate them because the guilt drove me to just feel miserable about them. How can I even feel okay that I have a car when these people are walking with no shoes on to get to the market for food? I was really struggling to reconcile those things, but it exhibited in an unhelpful way, where I started to just even spurn the gifts themselves instead of viewing them as blessings from God and asking, How can I steward these blessings from God for the good of others? I almost hated these blessings from God because it almost felt something like survivor’s guilt type of feeling. And so I’ve had to wrestle with that. How do I enjoy God’s good gifts, and yet live really open-handed towards others? We should feel a tension on the other side of just because something’s normal, doesn’t mean that I automatically have this right to it. Just because it’s normal for couples to have two cars doesn’t mean I should assume that’s what’s owed to me. Just because I can afford to do something doesn’t mean I should do that thing. And so I think that where I might want a list of what’s okay to own and what’s not okay to own, that would make life so much easier.

Matt Tully
A black and white list.

Amy DiMarcangelo
That would be so much easier, but I think God doesn’t give us those types of black and white lists because he wants us living in dependence on the Spirit and praying and living in humility. And so those things might change even season to season. Sometimes there might be a time where that gift of being able to go on a vacation is a huge blessing to your family and something that is going to refresh you for the ministry of serving God. And that’s a good thing. But there could be another season that you guys give up a family vacation in order to serve some specific need or give to some specific needs. So I think that the key thing for us is to live in that tension of enjoying gifts, but also not assuming that we deserve them, and not assuming we’re like entitled to them, but really living in this open-handed way, that we’re willing to lay down things that we do want and do desire that aren’t necessarily bad things. But we’re willing to lay them down when God is putting other things in front of us that are maybe more important.

Matt Tully
Willing to lay them down, but also, as you said before, willing to use them to serve others and benefit others. But even as you said that, my mind immediately goes to maybe a suspicion of my own heart. I can see this at work in my own heart, and certainly, it’s easy to be suspicious of others as we look judgmentally sometimes on others. I can imagine telling myself, I really should get that boat because I’m going to take a lot of people out on that boat, and I’m going to use it to bless other people. But that could so quickly become a bit of an excuse or kind of a justification. So how do you think about that dynamic—just the deceitfulness of our hearts? Even if we acknowledge that God does give us good gifts and we can, in theory, have those good gifts, should we be suspicious of our thinking on that, even when we have good ideas for how we would use them? How do you approach that?

Amy DiMarcangelo
I think we should. Like you said, it’s really easy to justify our own selfishness and self-interest. It’s just very easy to do. When we do that, there’s a lack of awareness of just how common sin is to man. I don’t think it’s very common for people to confess materialism. We assume the materialistic people are the ones with the really fancy cars and the really expensive purses. That’s not me! And we just compare ourselves to people who have more than us instead of realizing that when Jesus spoke about materialism, he was addressing a sin that is common to man. And so if I assume I don’t struggle with it, then that means I probably have some major blind spots that I need to confess. So we should have this humble awareness of just how common sin and temptation is. And so sins like materialism and greed and lack of generosity sometimes is not just what we’re doing but what we’re not doing. It’s where we lack mercy towards others, where we lack compassion for others. And so maybe it feels easy that you don’t feel like you’re neglecting the needs of others, but it’s because you don’t even see them because your eyes are so focused on yourself and your life. So I think there should be this measure of suspicion of our own hearts and just going humbly before God and asking him, God, please reveal to me where I’m prizing possessions more than I’m prizing generosity and using my money for your glory. And being honest in those prayers, being willing to be challenged, and also maybe inviting other people who know you who might see things you don’t see. We’re going to be tempted in different ways, so there are certain types of materialism that don’t feel tempting to me. I don’t get the big deal about a fancy car. That would never be something that drives me. But there are other things that drive me. There are other things that I want to get before I give my money away. So I think we need to also be aware that our temptations are going to exhibit in different ways because we’re tempted by different things.

12:39 - God’s Justice and Self-Sufficiency

Matt Tully
Thus far, we’ve been talking a lot about materialism and maybe the issue of generosity with our money, our finances, and our things. You get into a lot of other facets of what this justice and serving of others mindset looks like in our lives. I want to get into those, but maybe even taking a step back, I think one of the most difficult things for us can sometimes be, as we think about the differences around us—what we have and what we’ve been blessed with compared to what others have been blessed with or what they have had to deal with from birth. Maybe it’s not about physical wealth but it’s about a disability or it’s just a life situation and circumstances that they weren’t in control of and that are very different than mine. It can be easy to start to not just feel guilty ourselves but even question God. We can question his justice, as you said before. How have you wrestled through that deeper, more fundamental question of, How can God be allowing this to happen? One of the things that you stress in the book that I thought was really helpful and interesting relates to this question of coming to terms with God’s justice in the midst of the injustice that we see around the world and how that relates to us is you emphasize that God doesn’t need us. He’s got self-sufficiency, and even as he calls us to be involved in his work all around the world, we get involved knowing that, ultimately, he doesn’t need our help to do what he wants to do. How has that truth freed you to feel almost more empowered to go and be involved in this work?

Amy DiMarcangelo
It’s definitely very freeing because I think that when we try to play savior and we try to do everything, we feel constantly aware of how short we fall. It’s discouraging. We’re going to burn out. And then that will ultimately keep us from being faithful in the mission because we burn out. We can’t do it anymore. And so it’s vital that we remember that the mission is God’s. The victory is God’s. He’s going to ensure that every wrong thing is made right. And it’s his gracious will to include us in that so that we can see his power at work. And if we are able to remember that it’s in his hands, then that does energize us to be faithful where he’s called us and to trust him for the things we can’t do. When we are involved in ministry—maybe there’s a family you’re really involved with reaching out to—but you’re aware of maybe the limitations of what you can do to help, trusting that God cares for that family even more than you do, and trusting that God is ultimately the author of their salvation and the person who is going to direct their path, that’s just going to help give you freedom to be faithful where you can be and to trust him for the rest. And so I think anytime I insert myself as the savior who everything depends on me, it’s crushing because I wasn’t made to bear that kind of weight. That weight belongs to Jesus alone. So we need to live in the freedom and hope of the fact that Jesus is the one who’s going to accomplish his mission, and then we just get this joy of participating in it.

Matt Tully
It’s so ironic that so often if we aren’t living in that freedom and with that sense of God’s sovereignty over these things and our invitation to help, it can either lead us to, as you said, heap so much on ourselves that it becomes crushing, but ironically, it can also lead us to maybe an apathy. We feel, I can’t make a big difference. It’s too big of a problem. What’s the point? Have you ever felt like that as well, or maybe both at the same time?

Amy DiMarcangelo
I think I tend to veer more on the side of getting overwhelmed, but I do think apathy is sort of this protective measure that we do. It’s a way of saying, Oh, because I don’t like this feeling of feeling this grief about this kind of suffering going on, I’m just going to shut down and not care—because that’s certainly easier to just not care. And God hasn’t called us to that either. Our hearts should break for the things that break God’s heart. We should grieve that there’s evil in the world. We should grieve that there’s suffering. We should look at sin and suffering and see the world was not supposed to be this way. This is what sin has done, and that should grieve us. But as Christians, we grieve with hope. We don’t grieve as those without hope.

Matt Tully
One thing that I’ve heard other people talk about is they’ve reflected on the way that the world is so much more connected in our day and age than it ever has been before. We have the internet, we’ve got smartphones in our pockets, we see news headlines from the latest disaster and across the other side of the world. One point I’ve heard people make is just that unlike any other time in human history, we are constantly bombarded with terrible news from around the world—with the world’s suffering—in a way that no other people in human history have ever had to deal with the amount of bad news from around the world that we do. How do you think about that and the effect that that can have on us as Christians? Does that contribute to our feelings of helplessness and feeling overwhelmed, when we’re being exposed to stuff that maybe we were never supposed to be exposed to every day?

Amy DiMarcangelo
I think it’s really had an impact in the feeling of hopelessness. I don’t think there’s even more evil today than there has been; there’s just more awareness of it. And so for Christians, there’s this hard balance of we don’t want to put our heads in the sand and pretend bad things aren’t happening, but we also do need to realize our limitations. And when we’re inundated with so many bad headlines and so much terrible news, even just our bodies weren’t made to process that amount of grief, and so we’ll shut down. And that’ll actually end up causing us to become apathetic in a defense mechanism—I can’t deal with all of this bad news, so I’m just going to shut down. So without wanting to blind ourselves from the suffering, we do want to be people who see our neighbors. We also do need to see our limitations, and so maybe making sure we’re focusing on what are the needs in my community? Am I aware in my community? What are things I do have power or ability or circumstances to respond to? Prioritizing that way so that you’re not so burnt out that you can’t even be faithful in the context you are in.

Matt Tully
So you would say there should be a certain prioritization of our local community, and think there first before you start thinking about the bigger national and international problems that we face?

Amy DiMarcangelo
Yeah. I think there should be some sense of global concern, just in the sense of Christ’s mission is global. It’s for every tribe, tongue, and nation, and so we want to cultivate our hearts in such a way that it does care for all nations. We don’t want to be nationalistic. But as far as where our service is, we are put in a specific place for a specific reason. So while we want like our hearts to be passionate about God’s global mission, most of our work is going to probably be happening on a local level. And then in addition to that, we can care for other things as well. And there might be things, even on a local level, that drive our hearts to care about needs in other countries. We adopted. My primary call to love my daughter is more important than statistics of female orphans in India. I am called to love my daughter. She’s the one right in front of me. But in loving my daughter, that also increases my heart and burden for girls who were like her in India.

Matt Tully
That might drive you to be more involved.

Amy DiMarcangelo
Yes. Financially, that’s where most of our giving goes. Most of our charitable giving would go to India because we care for girls in India. But my day to day is loving my daughter. So I think as we’re involved locally, that might then stir other ways, even if it’s just prayer, ways that we’re carrying the burden internationally.

21:01 - Pursuing Justice

Matt Tully
So it’s definitely not an either/or, but as we do feel bombarded by all this bad news and all this need around the world, I think sometimes we can maybe go so far as just be content with sending money overseas and we neglect very concrete, tangible opportunities around us that are there. Let’s turn now and I want to look at a few of the concrete ways that you highlight that Christians today—especially Christians living in relatively prosperous and wealthy (by the world’s standards), peaceful kinds of communities, like most of us do live in—ways that we could still be involved in God’s work of pursuing justice and mercy and compassion among the least of these around the world. The first big category I wanted to hit on was just the idea of pursuing justice, as a broad category and principle. You highlight a few different ways we can do that. We do that through praying, we do that through preaching the gospel, and we do that through teaching biblical truth. But you also emphasize the importance of Christians being willing to speak up, to use their voice to advocate for justice and against injustice. What do you mean by that? And why is that so important? Why would you highlight that right along when you would say we should be preaching the gospel as well?

Amy DiMarcangelo
Speaking up is tricky because of how often we can insert our own arrogance in there. We could be harsh. Those of us who are always really ready to speak up need to probably be aware of do I need to watch how I speak up? But then other people need to be encouraged to speak up. And we need to be driven by just the reality of God caring for these things. And these aren’t just justice issues. Maybe the things that we’re scared to speak up about, we’re usually scared because it’s a controversial issue. We need to remember that these aren’t issues, but these things affect people, and so speaking up about justice issues is a way of loving people, and it’s a way of using the context or voice God has given us to advocate for someone who might not have that same context. So a child is going to have a unique helplessness, and so it’s important for teachers to speak up when they see maybe a child being mistreated in their classroom. Or a doctor, if they see signs of abuse. Those are ways that, within someone’s vocation, they can be speaking up for someone whose voice isn’t being heard and who’s more vulnerable to being steamrolled.

Matt Tully
It’s so interesting because these issues of justice and trying to speak up for people who don’t have a voice or don’t have as much of a voice. So often when we get into these topics, they are controversial and we think of them primarily through these political, ideological, tribal lenses, where this issue belongs to this camp and this issue is that camps. But I hear you saying, now and in the book, you emphasize that we have to get below that level and ask ourselves, What does God think about this issue? Even if it cuts against our tribe, we have to be willing to speak into it. I think the question, though, is how do we do that wisely? What does it look like to start to engage on some of these maybe controversial issues, where we do see that there is a justice element to them, but do it in a way that puts the emphasis on God’s word and what he has said? Do you have any thoughts on that?

Amy DiMarcangelo
Probably first and foremost, not being overly reactive to the culture, because so many issues are politically charged. And so to take a step back. It’s not coming with the same heat that maybe the other side comes with. Because then there’s just yelling matches and there’s no progress. But we do, as Christians, need to be able to separate from is this a conservative or liberal agenda, and look at things as, What does God say about this? And so I think if we’re being consistent, we’re going to be offending people on both the left and the right. So how can we be consistent in applying what Scripture says about maybe the stranger—welcoming the stranger, the immigrant. Immigration is going to be a hot topic. Abortion is a hot topic. Racism is a hot topic. But they’re not just hot topics; these are justice issues. Sin has infiltrated every aspect of the world, so we shouldn’t be surprised that these sins are still occurring. As far as how do we live this out practically, because we can’t just change the way society functions, it’s recognizing what sphere of influence do I have? Who are relationships that I can maybe speak to? What are maybe places in my area of work or in my neighborhood where if I see something, a way that someone is being treated unjustly, that I can support them? Where can I come in and defend them, if need be? But in order to do that, we sort of need to know what our spheres are. What can we influence? Because just yelling on social media is probably not going to influence many people. But when I’m talking with my small group and at church, and we’re maybe disagreeing about something, then we can get deeper. And that’s another reason to get away from the political aspect of things is there’s room for different political opinions about how governments should be addressing issues. But for the people of God, we’re called to an ethic of love. We’re called to an ethic of justice. And so we want that to be the foundation for then how we think through how we practically live that out. But first, am I seeing the image of God in all people? Am I seeing God’s desire to protect the vulnerable? And the reality of are we choosing to turn a blind eye to the fact that there is oppression because there’s sin in the world and that’s just what sin does?

27:15 - Viewing Your Home as a Base For Mercy

Matt Tully
So we’ve talked about using our voice to speak up for justice and against injustice in different kinds. We talked about generosity and using our possessions and things for the good of other people. Another thing you hit on is the importance of viewing your home as a base for mercy. I thought that was a really interesting metaphor. Our homes are such an important part of our lives, and it’s often where we spend so much of our time—our family’s time is rooted there. What do you mean by viewing your home as a base for mercy?

Amy DiMarcangelo
I naturally view my home as my domain. It’s like, This is my place. You’re just a visitor in it.

Matt Tully
It’s a castle.

Amy DiMarcangelo
Yeah, like it’s my fortress. In the writing of that chapter, there was a lot of conviction that God was doing in my own heart, because I think I just naturally do not view it like that. God gifts us differently, and the idea of being generous makes me excited. I get excited about how can we pursue this. That I love. And then it’s like, Oh, have someone over for dinner? Are you serious? I don’t want to do that! But it’s really important that we remember that our homes, which are a gift to us and a gift to our families, we’re on this earth for a season. This is a mission base. When we go home, part of it is to refresh us, but to refresh us for the mission. We are on mission all the time. We don’t get to check out when we get home. Okay, well I did my work life, I did my outreach, and now I’m home, and now life’s about me and my little castle. No. Even within our home, how are we welcoming others into our homes? How are we showing hospitality? How are we looking for people who are lonely and marginalized and forgotten? I think that’s a growing issue in our society. There’s so much isolation, and it’s so easy for people to live very isolated lives, and there’s real suffering in that. And so for Christians to be people who are looking for ways to welcome others into their home and to view their homes as, This place is not just for my comfort. It’s also for the comfort of others. It’s for ministry to others. I think that would really impact the way we even understand mission—viewing it as this starts here.

Matt Tully
Why is home such an important starting place? Unpack that a little bit more.

Amy DiMarcangelo
In a family context—I’ve got a husband and three kids—I think it’s really tempting to make homes just about the family and the nuclear family unit. That’s a gift from God, but we can very easily fall into idolatry about our families, the comfort of our families. That’s in a family context. If you’re a single person, it can still feel like, This is my space. I think we’re tempted to just view it as that—This is my place, my domain, my choices, my place.

Matt Tully
It’s where I come to get refreshed and relax. I’m out there in the world all day every day at work, but when I come home, I need to have my own space.

Amy DiMarcangelo
Yeah. And I think that’s just like in all of us. And again, this is where it comes into engaging the Holy Spirit and being humble. We don’t need to constantly have people over. It is good to have places where we can rest and be refreshed. Rest is a part of worship to God.
Rest is an important priority in the Christian life. So there is space for that. But do we actually view our homes as primarily our spaces, or do we view our homes as a place God has provided for us to rest and refresh and also to reach others for the glory of his name. And so I think the reason it has to start there is because it’s so easy to sort of separate that as, Well, there’s my outreach life, there’s my other life, and then there’s my home life, where it’s all about me. Nope, we got to start in our own homes, that life is about God.

Matt Tully
So you’ve already kind of said that’s not something that maybe comes naturally to you. You would rather be thinking out there and doing things out there. So have you found success in pushing back against that in your own life and your own family’s life? Do you have any ideas for maybe the more introverted types or the people who just are less inclined to have a bunch of people over? What’s worked for you and your family?

Amy DiMarcangelo
I’m grateful to have seen growth. It still feels very unnatural. I still have to fight temptations to not want to have people over, not want to reach out to neighbors. When I take my dog on a walk, I’d rather just keep my head down and not talk to anyone. But I feel like God is helping me change in that way. And practically speaking, I think it’s really helpful for people to remember hospitality doesn’t have to look the same for everyone. My mother-in-law is someone who will invite dozens of people over. There’s always strangers there at holidays—people who are new to the church who don’t have family or just someone she met at a restaurant. She’s that kind of person. And I’m a one-on-one person. And that’s okay. You can show hospitality. Some of us are going to be more gifted in one-on-one settings, not big parties. So we need to humbly understand that we’re not all gifted the same way, and that’s okay. But am I being faithful with the way God has wired me, that God has created me as someone who’s more introverted, am I then being faithful with that? Am I reaching out to someone who’s maybe more shy and they wouldn’t want a big party anyway, so this one-on-one setting is better for them? One family that our family has gotten to know and is sort of involved in reaching out to is a refugee family that lives about twenty minutes from us. We’ve known them for a while. It’s easier to just go to their house. I’d rather just go to their house. But realizing this is important that we invite them over too, that we welcome them to into our lives. And so when my natural sinful tendency is to want to separate that of let me keep my life private and I’ll come serve you on my terms, that’s what I need to fight. How can I welcome them into my home? How can I use my home to help them feel loved and cared for? How can I emanate the gospel coming out of my home? But it is hard and I’m fighting my natural tendencies. And I think that’s important for Christians to realize, that God gifts us in some ways and sometimes we’re going to lean into strengths, and that’s good. Praise God for that, that we’re going to be serving the Lord in ways that come naturally because we just love it. And then there are other times where I feel like, Man, I’m really taking up my cross right now. And we’re called to that too.

34:26 - Caring for Orphans

Matt Tully
I love the emphasis on recognizing that the way that we do all these things, whether it’s showing hospitality with our homes, being generous with our money and resources, or even speaking up when it comes to justice, that’s going to look different for all of us in different situations, depending on different giftings and personalities that God’s given us. But the important thing is that we’re looking for opportunities to do these things. And maybe one great example of another category where probably the way that we pursue this is going to look different depending on our families is the care for orphans. That’s this big category in Scripture we see many times—from Jesus and throughout the Old Testament—this admonition that God’s people would care for the orphan and the widow and the sojourner, but we’re talking about orphans right now. And in the book you highlight a few different ways that Christians might do this. I wonder if you could walk us through those ways and speak a little bit to each of them. So the first one you highlight is something like sponsorship, where we’re working with another organization. Talk about what that looks like.

Amy DiMarcangelo
Sponsorships are a great way to give our money to support organizations that are working to often provide education, medical care, and support to orphan children. And a lot of these sponsorship programs are working with kids who might still have one living parent. They might be fatherless. And one of the important aspects of that work is it’s working to preserve family units, or even if they don’t have any parents, maybe they can live with a relative. It’s working to preserve family units in whatever way you can. And in that way, it’s like helping to prevent orphanhood. It’s helping to prevent situations where a child might end up being abandoned because the one relative can’t afford to care for them. So sponsorships are a really helpful way of utilizing our money. There are really good programs out there that partner with churches that work in communities to strengthen homes where children are going to be vulnerable to abandonment or neglect or just poverty—where it’s not abandonment or neglect, but it’s that their parent literally cannot provide for them. And so it’s a good way to come alongside family—it’s often single mothers or a grandparent or some relative—so that that child can still grow up in their community, but are supported in supplemental ways.

Matt Tully
What are some of the other ways Christians even living in the suburbs, so to speak, could still be involved with caring for orphans?

Amy DiMarcangelo
Another way would be foster care. An important part of thinking about foster care is that a lot of these kids can be reunified with their families, so it’s almost like they’re temporarily orphans. When I say be involved in foster care, I don’t just mean being a foster parent, but really supporting foster parents. There’s a huge burnout rate and turnover rate of people who do it for a little while and just can’t handle it because it’s hard. And so really coming alongside and supporting families that you might know who are involved in foster care so that they can care for a child until that child is hopefully able to be reunified with a parent or relative. But then even stepping back a little bit from that, hopefully if we live in church cultures where there is foster care happening and there is adoption happening, recognizing the importance of a Sunday school teacher who’s aware that one of the kids in her class might have some different needs that are a little more pronounced than some of the other kids. There’s just an intentionality to care for that kid where they’re at. Some churches can provide one-to-one aids. And having just a patience and understanding for kids who are coming from hard places is a really important way for the church as a whole to wrap around kids who might be functionally orphans for a time, or were orphans and then were adopted. But once someone’s adopted, that doesn’t make their previous story just disappear. So just knowing that there are kids who are coming into our churches from hard places, that’s a really good opportunity for the body of Christ to just show patience and grace and love and adapting our preferences to meet the needs that we might be encountering.

Matt Tully
And then the last category that you highlight is adoption, as you mentioned before. And you have already told us that you and your husband adopted. What led you to that decision? I think a lot of Christian parents have certainly been exposed to it, are familiar with adoption, maybe know other families who’ve adopted. But often it can feel like this big thing, or maybe it’s almost like a fallback option. How did you guys think about adoption, and how did that fit into your plan for your family?

Amy DiMarcangelo
My husband has two adopted siblings, so it was pretty much like something he felt very on board with right away. I had actually taken a couple trips to India, and during one of them, I was in this children’s home, working with this Indian Christian organization. They were having parent visitation day. It was almost like a boarding school that they were at. They were from rural villages, and they were receiving quality education, but their parents would come visit them. And during this particular day, parents were coming, and there was a little girl left in the room, and I went in to see her. I said, Why aren’t you outside with everyone? And she told me she didn’t have parents, that she was an orphan. And God used just that specific moment to make me know I want to adopt, and I want to adopt from India. There’s need everywhere, so when I advocate for India, I don’t ever want to sound like I’m like, So don’t do the other things. God loves adoption. But yes, in India there’s a lot of need. There are a lot of kids in need of homes. There are a lot of girls who are really vulnerable, a lot of times because their mothers were very vulnerable, whether it’s girls being born in the red light district or things like that. And I think it’s about a fifth of the world’s orphans live in India. In knowing that statistic and also that less than 2 percent of Indians are Christian, it just feels like this very weighty thing of orphaned girls—vulnerable orphaned girls and boys—are really vulnerable, and they’re just not being taught the hope of Christ that many would be aware of. So it’s an unreached country. And so that was another sort of aspect that really gave us a passion for India specifically. I would celebrate all adoptions.

Matt Tully
Speak to the Christian listening right now who would say, whether it was in a domestic adoption or international adoption, they would love to think about it in theory, but it just seems like it’s too expensive, it’s too hard, it’s too uncertain, and there’s too much risk. It feels like a mountain that I don’t know how I could ever climb that mountain.

Amy DiMarcangelo
I feel like the first encouragement is that those are normal things to feel, so don’t view that as, Oh, so this must mean I’m not called to it.

Matt Tully
Everyone who adopts felt all those things.

Amy DiMarcangelo
Everyone goes into it scared. Everyone’s going to have a moment of, Oh my goodness! Am I doing the right thing? It is scary. There are unknowns. Something also to remember, though, is when you’re having biological kids, there are unknowns there too. There’s no guarantee about what our child’s health is going to be, whether they follow God. We sort of have this illusion of control when we’re growing our families in a more typical way. But we don’t really have control there either. And so there is a sense of I need to have faith for this, but I also have to have faith for my sons. And I think there is an extra sensitivity that there is this reality that adoption, just in itself, the child is coming from a place of brokenness and trauma. The child you’re adopting has experienced significant loss, whether it’s a parent who has died or a parent who has abandoned them or a parent who just was unable to care for them, there’s significant loss. So there are going to be unique challenges that I think that adoptive parents go through. But again, none of us know what we have ahead of us. We’re all going to face trials that we never saw coming. Whether we have kids even at all or not, we’re going to face trials. And so we can have faith for God to meet us there. His grace isn’t sufficient for all your hypotheticals because you’re not in those seasons. God’s grace is sufficient for us in the day of our trouble. And so we need to trust God for today, and then tomorrow, when there’s a new thing, we can trust God tomorrow. But it’s very easy, if you’re praying about adoption, to go through all the hypothetical things that could go wrong. And while it’s good to not go into it with rose-colored glasses where you think, Oh, now there’s this happy ending and nothing will ever be hard. That’s not good either, but we also don’t need to walk into it with fear and dread. We can just know it’s going to be hard, and God’s going to be enough through whatever that hard is.

44:01 - Caring for Sojourners

Matt Tully
Another big category is caring for sojourners. What might that look like for Christians living today in a place like the US in the suburbs? How do we care for the sojourner?

Amy DiMarcangelo
That is another thing that could look a range of different ways. It could be that you host an exchange student. You’re maybe hosting someone who’s from a country where they’re not very exposed to the gospel. Or they are, and it’s just scary living in another country. I love to travel. I love visiting other places. But moving to another place and not knowing the language, not knowing the culture, that’s just going to be overwhelming for anybody, even if you’re coming from the best circumstances. So in those contexts, whether it’s an exchange student or maybe someone who’s on a work visa, we just want to be sensitive to the fact that’s overwhelming. And so how can we be welcoming and show interest in someone else’s culture? How can we be sensitive and show care through that? But because this book’s about mercy, I’m more focused on people who might immigrate here out of really hard circumstances. Or refugees where they were forced to leave their country. They didn’t even want to, most likely, but were forced to flee their country for the safety of themselves or their families. And just knowing that people are coming from really scary circumstances, and then put in really scary circumstances where maybe you feel that relief of I’m safe now, but then now there’s this whole world to navigate. And you don’t know the language. And maybe whatever degree you had back in your home country doesn’t count for anything here. I know Syrian refugees who were like doctors, and now they’re maybe stocking shelves at Walmart. Just the adjustment that happens when you lose your country, you lose your career, you lose your community—there’s so much pain in that. And so it gives Christians really a unique opportunity to just show the love and comfort of God, and to care for very practical needs. One of the families we reach out to, they’re Syrian. We’ve known them for a long time, and over the years they’ve learned more and more English, but there are still things that are just overwhelming. When they get all the papers sent home for their kids’ schools, they can’t read it all. So sometimes the way I care for them is I read the notes from the teacher and I try to simplify and explain to them what’s going on. Those kinds of things that we don’t even think about because it’s not a big deal for us, but it can be so overwhelming. Even junk mail. This sounds so weird, but I had my friend Abdulaziz hand me a bunch of mail and say, What is this? What should I do with this? And he was concerned. I’m like, Oh, throw it out! But he didn’t know. And so there are just very practical ways that we can really advocate for refugees and immigrants who are probably going to be facing some rudeness too. As Americans or English speakers, we can go pretty much anywhere in the world and we’ll be able to find someone who can speak English, and so we don’t have the same tolerance for people who don’t speak our language. So sometimes it’s just being there for someone and being patient with them as they’re struggling to communicate. It’s not their first language, so it’s going to be hard, and so we’ve got to show patience. So I think that is a really important way the church can be practically caring for the sojourner. And then I think it’s really important that we see it, too, as part of the Great Commission, there are people coming to our country who are from countries where there is little to no gospel. There aren’t Christians there. And so you might be the first Christians they ever encounter. And what a blessing that is. When we’re praying for the gospel among all nations, sometimes that’s God sending missionaries out, but sometimes that’s God bringing people to our communities and our school districts. And that’s another way to be accomplishing the Great Commission.

Matt Tully
Amy, thank you so much for helping us think through some of the many ways that we can be involved in God’s mission, both abroad around the world, but even in our own neighborhoods. We appreciate it.

Amy DiMarcangelo
Thanks for having me.

Popular Articles in This Series

View All

Podcast: Help! I Hate My Job (Jim Hamilton)

January 06, 2020

Jim Hamilton discusses what to do when you hate your job, offering encouragement for those frustrated in their work and explaining the difference between a job and a vocation.

Crossway is a not-for-profit Christian ministry that exists solely for the purpose of proclaiming the gospel through publishing gospel-centered, Bible-centered content. Learn more or donate today at crossway.org/about.