There are written accounts of an old Roman practice…when a child would be born into a family, it would be placed at the feet of it’s father. If the father stooped down and picked up that child, it would be legitimized and brought into the family. But sometimes, the father wouldn’t pick up the child. Maybe the child looked weak or frail, maybe the child wasn’t the preferred gender, or maybe it was simply an inconvenient time for the family, and so instead the child would be picked up and taken outside the city and discarded. This was a completely common and acceptable practice at the time. It was called infant exposure. But we also have historical records that tell us how early followers of Jesus would go outside of the city on regular basis at night and they would walk up and down the streets listening for the cries of children and when they found them, they would rescue them and bring them back into their own homes and raise them up as their own beloved sons and daughters.
Again, God places the lonely in families. Psalm 68:6 (NLT) And He’s been doing this through His Church. This is our history. We have the opportunity to pick up the same torch.
