'looking after orphans'

The other day a man who was chatting with me said - "I don't envy you your job."

We were standing outside at the end of a funeral service. The death of the lovely young woman who'd died was in particularly tragic circumstances. I think it was that to which the man was referring.

And sure, there are things which I guess no one in their right mind would choose to do. This sort of situation would be one such thing.

But, then, this is the world we live in. These sort of things do happen.

And it is in the end a huge and humbling privilege to be able to share with a family in their grief at such a time. Sad, beyond all words. But special. Sacred. Times they'll never forget.

To be able to be with them, and to share with them such times of sacred grief, and minister the grace and care and presence of the living Lord by word and deed on what for them is always hallowed ground - well, there are few more elevated privileges a man can know.

The small group of folk I was with last night were thinking about the way in which the Bible is insistent that our faith must always be worked out and find expression in our actions.

"Don't merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says."

Just do it.

The guy who made that point was pretty direct. James was his name. The brother of Jesus.

He plainly learned a lot from his brother, because he didn't mince his words. I mean, he's gracious in the way he goes about it, but he kind of calls a spade a spade. He tells it like it is.

So he went pretty much straight on from saying what he did about 'just doing it' to say this -

"Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress ..."

Grief is often the context where the gospel's to take root. The practical needs that often there are as the sequel to the sorrows that life brings.

We were conscious again of exactly that tonight when the Leadership Team met again.

Very practical, pressing needs that some folk who've been going through the mill in life now face. And needs that we're able, it seems, to meet.

The only sort of 'religion' that the Lord has any time for is the sort of thing which just goes out and does it. Looking after such 'orphans' and 'widows' in their distress.

Like the Lord simply says, if you can't or won't do this, you're missing the point entirely and are just a waste of space.

It's not always easy, no. Anything but. Yet it is just the biggest privilege. To be and become the means by which the Lord himself brings his love and his care and his presence to a world in need.

And if thereby some people come to meet and know the Lord, then all that that's involved for us seems more than worth the effort and the cost it brings.

Life has been imparted.

And the labour that's involved in giving birth is soon forgotten in the joy of that new life.

I should know - I've seen it in my lovely daughter-in-law this past momentous week!