Stumbling Across a Theme

Making steady daily progress through the 90 day Bible reading thing, now a little over halfway through Exodus. I’ve once again noticed something that also stood out to me the last time we did this in 2018. There is a theme that I have stumbled upon. Yes, I am aware that there are many themes through all of scripture and this is not the most prominent one, I’m sure. But I’m only six days in and already I’ve seen it talked about four different times and I haven’t even gotten out of Exodus! Here it is…ready?

God spends a lot of time reminding people to take care of widows, orphans, the poor, and to be kind to the stranger.

That’s it. Thats the thing that has stood out so far. If I remember from 2018, I’m going to run into this theme many more times in the Old Testament and famously in the New Testament with the words of Jesus from Matthew 25: “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” I’ve already read about God reminding Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to make provision for the poor and to shelter the stranger. I’ll see it again in Leviticus, Psalms, Ruth etc…It seems to me that a topic that constantly comes up in the Bible should be something we take seriously.

Some of you might be thinking that I’m trying to make some political statement by bringing this up. Nothing could be further from the truth. My interpretation of these commands from God are that they are given to each of us—to individuals. We should take care of the widows, orphans, the poor, and we should welcome the stranger. What we do collectively through organizations, churches, and through government should indeed include these commands. But we are not off the hook as individuals just because we pay taxes that fund programs designed to help. To quote Dickens, “are there not poor houses?”  What this means for me, for Doug Dunnevant in 2022, is perhaps more complicated. After all, there are so many poor, so many homeless etc. But, while I can’t fix every problem around me, I can sure do a better job of noticing them. I can pay closer attention to the men and women who walk past me every single day. I can do a better job of opening my eyes to the needs of others instead of being so focused on my own problems. I can’t help but feel that since this command is woven through the entirety of scripture God must be deadly serious about it. 

Taking care of the poor, widows, orphans and strangers in the land isn’t the Gospel, but rather a result of an encounter with it. Caring for the poor is no substitute for the redemption that comes through faith in Christ, but neither is it some quaint notion that we so easily check off of our to-do list by the fact that we pay our taxes. James 1:27 puts it this way:

“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.”

I’m no theologian, but those words seem awfully clear and unambiguous—and something I should take seriously.