“Do not take advantage of the widow or the fatherless. If you do and they cry out to me, I will certainly hear their cry. My anger will be aroused, and I will kill you with the sword; your wives will become widows and your children fatherless.
- Exodus 22:22-24
Then celebrate the Festival of Weeks to the Lord your God by giving a freewill offering in proportion to the blessings the Lord your God has given you. And rejoice before the Lord your God at the place he will choose as a dwelling for his Name—you, your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, the Levites in your towns, and the foreigners, the fatherless and the widows living among you. Remember that you were slaves in Egypt, and follow carefully these decrees.
Celebrate the Festival of Tabernacles for seven days after you have gathered the produce of your threshing floor and your winepress. Be joyful at your festival—you, your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, and the Levites, the foreigners, the fatherless and the widows who live in your towns.
- Deuteronomy 16:10-14
Woe to those who make unjust laws,
to those who issue oppressive decrees,
to deprive the poor of their rights
and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people,
making widows their prey
and robbing the fatherless.
- Isaiah 10:1-2
A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling.
- Psalm 68:5
“So I will come to put you on trial. I will be quick to testify against sorcerers, adulterers and perjurers, against those who defraud laborers of their wages, who oppress the widows and the fatherless, and deprive the foreigners among you of justice, but do not fear me,” says the Lord Almighty.
- Malachi 3:5
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.
- James 1:27
As for younger widows, do not put them on such a list. For when their sensual desires overcome their dedication to Christ, they want to marry. Thus they bring judgment on themselves, because they have broken their first pledge. Besides, they get into the habit of being idle and going about from house to house. And not only do they become idlers, but also busybodies who talk nonsense, saying things they ought not to. So I counsel younger widows to marry, to have children, to manage their homes and to give the enemy no opportunity for slander. Some have in fact already turned away to follow Satan.
If any woman who is a believer has widows in her care, she should continue to help them and not let the church be burdened with them, so that the church can help those widows who are really in need.
- 1 Timothy 5:11-16
Boilerplate
I’m Harold Dykstra. I’m retired, but I go to food bank distributions all over Tracy and talk to people that need someone who will listen to their story. My time is well spent. A police lieutenant suggested that I write down the conversations that I had with an angel. I did not know she was an angel at the time. The angel, for a little over a year, indwelled a life-sized posable action figure my children bought me, so that I would not be perceived as travelling alone. And in a way, she was training me for what I do while talking to the needy. She probed my heart to find out what I believed and how I express love for others. She changed my life. Since she was a doll that had come to life, we came up with the term ‘other living.’ She was not a human, an animal, or even a plant, but she was definitely living, and very vibrant. Oh, excuse me, angels have no gender, but the angel indwelled a doll named Bountiful Babs. After seeing the angel in that form for over a year, I cannot see her in my mind in any other form.
This Week’s Question
In the last episode, Babs decided that I needed more rest.
But this week, Babs got home and could not get in touch with Gladys.
I went through the latest church directory, but the phone number was different. I think she had moved after her husband died, and they had not printed a new directory.
We went to the church to get the latest contact information.
The church secretary sighed, “Gladys is in the hospital. And it is the saddest thing. She keeps asking for someone named ‘Babs.’ We have no Babs in the church membership. No one that we talked to knew of a visitor named Babs. She went through a rough patch there, and she is getting better. She just isn’t in a good place emotionally. Do you know a ‘Babs’, Mr. Dykstra?”
Babs stepped forward, “That’s why we wanted her updated contact information. I’m Babs.”
The church secretary gasped, “Well, land sakes, young lady. Are you family?”
Babs scrunched her nose, “No, ma’am. I befriended her the first time I visited the church. She helped me get my driver’s license. But I travel with Harold, but when we are in town, Gladys sits next to me. Gladys knows that. I bought her a present on this latest business trip. Where is she?”
The church secretary was worried that Babs was not a member of the church, but I was, and we were together. Besides, delivering Babs to the hospital has been a daily discussion at the church office since Gladys went into the ER. Gladys was at T.R.U.S.T. Medical Center. The secretary even had the room number.
When we got to the nursing station to see if it was alright to enter the room, they were hesitant until Babs said, “Hi, I’m Babs, and I heard she was asking for me.”
The nurse changed her tune immediately. She ushered us into the room where Gladys was.
Gladys seemed to be asleep, but she opened her eyes when we entered. She made no sign of recognizing us. She said, “Nurse, thank you for coming in. I just saw an angel. Am I about to go home to be with Jesus?”
Babs giggled and smiled, “No, Gladys, it’s just me, Babs.”
At that moment, Gladys brightened. She saw us clearly now. “I have been praying that you would come back to Tracy, soon. Babs, you always know just the right words to cheer me up.”
Babs shrugged, “I usually just say some Bible verses.”
Gladys smiled, “And you say the right Bible verses that touch my heart every time I’m hurting. Even when we talk on the phone. You are such a dear young woman, Babs. I didn’t want to go before I had a chance to tell you that you have changed my life. People weren’t sitting with me on my pew, and I learned it was my attitude. I started focusing on loving other people, and now people treat me better too. When you are always down because your spouse died, people are polite, but they find excuses to talk to someone else quickly. Are you going to be here for a while?”
Babs turned to me. I said, “At least three weeks.”
The nurse smiled, “And Gladys, there is no more talk about checking out early, now. You’ll have three weeks of visits from your Babs, and by then, I am sure you will be back home.”
We talked for about an hour. Okay, Babs and Gladys talked for about an hour. Gladys let me use closed captions on the television. I watched an hour of a baseball game. I can’t even remember what teams were playing. I simply did not want to eavesdrop on their conversation, but Gladys was laughing and smiling and holding Babs’ hand the whole time. Babs leaned in close to make sure I could not hear and whispered a few things from time to time.
When we got home and finally took off our shoes, Babs wanted a Bible Study on the subject of widows.
I nodded, and we went to the living room. We each had our Bibles. We each sat in recliners with lamps to give us light on what we were reading.
I said, “I would like to start with…”
Babs turned to me and said, “Can I start? Gladys won’t be around much longer. Don’t ask me how I know, Harold. Yes, the doctors have her on the mend for now, but probably while we are gone on our Fall sales run, or your Fall sales run, since I am just the travel buddy. I may call this house ‘home’ but it is your home. No, I want to visit her maybe every other day if you don’t mind driving me to the hospital.” I nodded. “I have learned a lot about humans by becoming a friend to Gladys. I am learning about love, friendship, and soon, loss. I need more time with her, and she needs more time with me. And I have extra tissues in case I get broken.” Note: Since parts of the body she indwelled were inflatable, she feared that the first time that she cried, and tears started flowing, she thought she had sprung a leak, she was “broken.” The term stuck ever since.
I suggested, “Let’s get started in Exodus 22. There are references to ‘widow’ in Genesis, starting with Tamar, but in Exodus 22, we see a law to not take advantage of a widow. So, God is telling us to not forget about widows and the fatherless, or as the New Testament states it, orphans. In Deuteronomy 14, the Lord tells the Israelites to take the tithe and distribute the tithe among the Levites who do not have a land allotment, the widows, the fatherless, and the foreigners. Then in Deuteronomy 16, it talks about the various proscribed festivals and mentions the widows and fatherless again. The point is to include them. Never forget them. In an agrarian culture, you live off the food you produce. You either sell, trade, or consume. But a widow without children has no one to help her. We will come back to 1 Timothy 5 again, but in verse 16, the Apostle Paul says that families take care of their widows and orphans. That way, the church can focus on those who do not have such a structure. But these days, there are a lot of broken families. That kind of thing opens a few cans of worms.”
Babs giggled, “You have used that expression before. It is a warning that the subject is much more complicated than you might think on the surface. But I think the reason for that is a variety of sins. The children do not honor their parents. They are too greedy. And coming down to Jesus’ greatest commandment, they lack the love.”
I nodded, “But to throw another worm out there, I have known families of four or five children who had family members in every one of the contiguous four USA time zones, and at times with one or another in the military, even further spread apart. So, there are the childless widows and there are the virtually childless widows with children grown and moved away, far away. Sure, as many of those families that I could name, there are families that renovated the house so that the widow had an apartment. They had family time or alone time by opening or shutting a connecting door. But the Levitical Law was quickly violated, even in this one little thing, Isaiah 10 talks about how God was angered that laws were passed to take advantage of widows and the fatherless. As Psalm 68:5 states, God is a defender of the widows and fatherless. In Malachi 3, God says that He will stand as judge against a lot of people, but among them are those that take advantage of widows and the fatherless.”
Babs asked, “So, why do widows become ignored? James says in James 1:27 that religion should be to not be polluted by this world, and I see that all over the place, even in the church. We have been to some doozies over the past year. But the other thing is to care for widows and orphans. If the family can’t or won’t, why does the church also fail?”
I shrugged, “Some is sin, but some is misinterpreting or maligning 1 Timothy 5. Let’s avoid our responsibility so that we are not considered on the wrong side of that horrible misogynist, the Apostle Paul.”
Babs scrunched her nose, “What is misogynistic about Paul?”
I sighed, “He has some rebukes regarding women that are taken out of context. Two women are having an open argument that disrupts the worship service and splits the church into two factions and Paul tells the women to be quiet and behave. The other is when a church service was disrupted by women asking their husbands what the speaker is trying to say, and Paul says to ask your husband when you get home. That accomplishes two things. The church service is not disrupted, and you take the message home with you to better incorporate it into your life. But women’s libbers of the past 100 years or more have maligned Paul as a result and 1 Timothy 5 is thrown in, although it is much about the customs of the day. A young widow can work, or she can find a new husband. Thus, he suggests that you treat them with less ‘charity’ than the ones that do not have such options. Family takes care of some widows. The church takes care of the elderly widows that are left, and the younger ones who can work, can take care of themselves. It is basically how the genteel society of that day took care of that issue. He was just detailing what they knew that they should do.”
Babs asked, “So, how did the church fail Gladys?”
I sighed, “Babs, they had the caring team check up on her. They provided the transportation when they found her too sick to drive herself to the hospital. And that is a mess if you do that. Now, your car is stranded in the ER parking lot since they may not let you drive home. But the church did a few things that helped. Where the church as a whole breaks down is not establishing relationships like you have with Gladys. No one that they asked knew who you were. That is natural in that you have only been in that church for a half dozen worship services. And maybe it comes down to what you said early on, the lack of loving one another. I like a lot of people in that church, but when I am only at home for a week or two, should I sacrifice those precious days visiting someone that I really do not know that well?”
Babs groaned, “Then, Harold, get to know them that well. But I see what you mean. With hundreds of members in the church and multiple worship services, the few who truly care are spread rather thin. But my heart breaks for these people, Harold. Gladys, especially.”
And with that she closed her Bible, and the tears began to flow. I walked to her chair and held her hand.
Credits
All these conversations remind me of my conversations with my wife. We would talk about anything and everything. And most of the time, it sounded like a discussion in a Sunday school class.
My wife had two elderly people that she befriended. I have written about how she would tell them about Jesus, and they did not listen. I think there was more than the three of them in the beginning, but the two ladies and my wife stayed friends who went out every other week and then once a month, until one got dementia. At about that time, my wife had her health issues. In fact, the last two or three outings that she took them on, I did the driving. Odd, how the three ladies were all church members, but my wife believed, one lady doubted, and the other was firm that she did not believe in Jesus. And after each day spent with them, my wife wept as she drove home, but she was already planning what they would do next time.
Soli Deo Gloria. Only to God be the Glory.
Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley 
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