Last night our women’s group was reading and discussing James 1 where it says that “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.” We all live in a fairly affluent part of the world. There are not a lot of orphans and widows in distress.
Until we start looking around and broadening our understanding of orphans and widows. Orphans are not necessarily just those children who have lost both mother and father. Aren’t they also children whose parents don’t have time for them or who leave them to fend for themselves?
And widows are not necessarily just those who have lost their husband but perhaps also those whose husband is abusive or just plain absent?
It’s not always obvious. And sometimes it’s just really hard to know what to do or how to help. It’s also really hard not to become polluted by the cynicism of a broken, sinful world.
And yet if religion is the practice of our faith, the living out of what we believe, we need to look where God is pointing.
Just Sayin' 