Do you love the widows and orphans of the world?
God is very interested in the widows and orphans. Are you?
It’s amazing how plain James makes the care of widows and orphans in verse 27 of chapter 1:
Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world. (KJV)
The NIV puts a slightly different twist on it:
Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. (NIV)
Religion, we’re told, should primarily be concerned with protecting the vulnerable and helping us stay pure in a sinful world. I’ll be the first to admit that if unprodded I rarely practice the first two (well, all three if I’m being honest). I’d much rather leave the messy business of caring for kids without parents to someone who “has a heart for those things.” Likewise, looking after widows might mean sympathizing with someone’s painful loss.
It’s just so much easier to just read my Bible to myself, then to go and care for groups of people that have been forgotten.
So I wonder, when’s the last time you made a concerted effort to reach out a widow or an orphan? Is it something that you do regularly? Do you have any stories of how you’ve been blessed by the experience?
What does your church do to practice what James calls “pure religion”?
This train of thought was started when I ran across a site called 143million.org. As you might have guessed given the URL and the content of this post, there are approximately 143 million orphans in the world. To put it in perspective, that’s about half the population of the United States.
If you’re interested, they have a number of ideas of how to help the orphans of the world.
very very good never looked at it like that. I always looked at keep oneself unspotted from the world. But we are to tdo the first two as well
Thanks for your comments, rose!
i’m 42 and i’ve been a widow for 6yrs now…i lost my home and my car and i had no money because my husband didn’t leave any insurance…my church claimed they loved me and would be by myside…well i’m living with a former co-worker and sleeping on the floor…my oldest is in her first year of college. and i have two at home!! it’s been a struggle to make ends meet when your at a loss of income and your help is gone!! i love the lord but i don’t feel the same anymore about joining a church…i do visit a church but i’m not going to join….it might be a long time before i do that again!! god bless, arita
@arita wow, I cannot imagine the heartache you’re going through! Thank you for sharing. It’s sobering to hear your story. I hope you can find a church that truly cares for you.