True Devotion Cares for Society’s “Orphans and Widows”
Daily Scripture
James 1:22-27
22 You must be doers of the word and not only hearers who mislead themselves. 23 Those who hear but don’t do the word are like those who look at their faces in a mirror. 24 They look at themselves, walk away, and immediately forget what they were like. 25 But there are those who study the perfect law, the law of freedom, and continue to do it. They don’t listen and then forget, but they put it into practice in their lives. They will be blessed in whatever they do.
26 If those who claim devotion to God don’t control what they say, they mislead themselves. Their devotion is worthless. 27 True devotion, the kind that is pure and faultless before God the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their difficulties and to keep the world from contaminating us.
Daily Reflection & Prayer
One key reality that John and Charles Wesley grasped early from their worship and Bible study was that true holiness wasn’t just personal, but social. He and his friends actively worked to help prisoners and widows in Oxford. “For Wesley, faith and good works were inseparable…. Wesley, like Paul [in Ephesians 2:8-10], was clear that our works are a response to salvation and the clear fruit of that salvation.” * That has remained vital to Wesley’s spiritual descendants (including us) ever since.
- In John Wesley’s time (as today), many claimed to be followers of Christ, even though their intellectual knowledge of Jesus’ teachings made no practical difference to the way they lived their lives. Has your allegiance to Christ and acceptance of his love and grace altered your activities, priorities and lifestyle at all? In what ways?
- James (who was very likely Jesus’ earthly half-brother) wrote about “the perfect law, the law of freedom,” which may startle you at first. To many of us, “law,” viewed wrongly, is about guilt and frustration, not freedom. When have you found in your own life that doing whatever you feel like produces, not freedom, but a kind of slavery to compulsions? In what ways have you found that living God’s way increases your freedom rather than limiting or frustrating it?
Prayer
Lord Jesus, I want the true freedom you offer me. Help me use my freedom to serve and bless others, as you did. Amen.
GPS Insights
Melanie Hill
Melanie Hill, who serves as the Director of Operations at Resurrection's West location, wrote today’s Insights. She is a Navy mom and mom of three teen daughters, a wife of 24 years, and an avid fan of nachos.
Brazil has a tragic history with street kids, culminating in The Candelária Massacre in 1993, where police murdered many homeless children. Today’s GPS took me back to the first international service trip I ever took in 2002, just nine years after that massacre. I headed to Brazil with a small group to visit two orphanages. In the shadow of that awful event, those two orphanages were making great strides to care for “the least of these.”
They had developed a new model. Instead of piling large numbers of kids into even larger dormitories, they built smaller homes on their property where eight kids lived with two foster parents. This created a more normal living environment with many of the things most children have: siblings, parents, and even chores. In addition to a more normalized living condition, they had a school and, as the kids got older, job training. When they graduated from the orphanage, they were ready to find a job and live on their own.
On one of our last nights there, our team got to take some of the graduating students to dinner. As we walked into the restaurant, the missionaries we were working with told us it would be the first time for all of these kids. Many didn’t know what to do with a menu, let alone how to order pizza. It was a moment that has stuck with me—watching their eyes light up when they were told they could pick whatever they wanted to eat.
Over the years, I’ve taken other trips and visited orphanages in places like Guatemala, but that first trip to Brazil stayed with me the most. The honor of working with an organization that took the call to “care for orphans and widows” seriously has shaped so much of how I look at the world and how I respond to it.
I’ve found inspiration in so many others, too, over the years. Friends who have taken the courageous step to open their homes as foster parents. Grandparents who have stepped in to raise grandkids. While I have been inspired by my own experiences and others, it’s still too easy to find reasons why I can’t help.
I don’t have the time. I don’t know where to start. It’s all too overwhelming.
Maybe you’ve found yourself thinking some of these things, too. I get it. While a global service trip is always a great idea (join us in worship this weekend to hear about the trips coming up this year), maybe that’s not your first step. Maybe you aren’t ready to become a foster parent, but there are ways you can support those who are. You can be part of the team that provides respite nights for foster parents or a care community that supports foster families by providing a meal or mowing the lawn. You can find out more about how to get involved in our Foster and Adopt ministries by clicking here. There are easy, meaningful ways that each of us can start living fully into caring for “the least of these.” Find your starting place and go for it!
© 2026 Resurrection: A United Methodist Church. All Rights Reserved.
Scripture quotations are taken from The Common English Bible ©2011. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
References
* Hamilton, Adam, Revival: Faith as Wesley Lived It (p. 108). Abingdon Press. Kindle Edition.
