I've been dwelling on the term orphan lately. When I hear this word I usually think of children. But one of the definitions in Websters that doesn't even mention children describes an orphan as "one deprived of some protection or advantage".
I would imagine that orphans would also be lonely, based on lack of protection or even advantage. Homelessness and the poverty culture can be a very lonely life. Good thing The Book mentions in Psalm 68:5 that the CEO will put the lonely into families.
I'm starting to observe, for the first time in my undercover career, that those on the streets, in the halfway houses, and in some poverty neighborhoods are truly orphans.
For me, that's shining a whole new light on The Book's passages on orphans.
Deprived of protection. Deprived of advantage.
3 comments:
wow...what an interesting observation.
And there are numerous passages in the Bible instructing Israel as to their attitude toward widows, orphans and sojourners. Not least James 1:27. When you hear people bashing 'religion', set them strait. Religion is not the problem, it is the answer, as we find in James. There are problems, but this isn't it.
Good place for a spot light, Agent B. One time when I was a teenager, I walked around my home town snapping photos of all the sights the Chamber of Commerce would not want in their brochures. I really did not have to walk far to do it. Just out the back door instead of the front. I even found drunk Ute indians sleeping in the bushes in the otherwise beautiful city park.
I never found anyone to publish them. And we did not have internet in those days. But your report offers as much. I support it.
Blessings...
Not meaning to be lippy, (only a little). The Lord showed me something once as I was feeling down about life and wanted to walk in some "nice" neighborhoods (ie. rich and glamorous), but before I got there, I was instead captivated by a house scheduled for demolition. It was in a shambles, but as I sat and looked at it, I saw beauty and meaning, a cry to our society to be heard even. I know some of our homeless friends had been kicked out of the house and that a neighbor had complained and was getting action for the place to be bulldozed. At many levels though, all I could see was history, the beautiful melting of old building and nature reclaiming, the ironics of middle class and homeless living a stone's throw away from the filthy rich... suddenly I saw beauty in what most saw as ugly. My question is why was the park otherwise beautiful if not for the drunk Ute indian? Since then, I've had a dream of painting Jesus in the heart of all that we see as ugly, so that people would see the beauty of the woman in Houston's 5th ward, or playing with the kids who live on a garbage heap. Are people not the crowning achievement of creation, in God's image? No matter how much Satan has tried to ridicule people and denigrate them, as long as they are living, we can see beauty in them, for they point to the genius of God and live by His breath.
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