Taking Advantage of Widows

James 1:27 states “Pure religion and undefiled before our God and Father is this… to visit the widows in their affliction…”

In our High School class we have been talking about this concept and things we can do.

Of course in the Mosaic Law farmers would let widows glean their fields but I hardly think today we could get the widows to go out into the cotton fields during the hottest month of the year to glean after the mechanical cotton strippers have done their job. We live in a different world… I doubt they would glean those fields even if they were air conditioned.

Many years ago I knew a fellow who had a huge antique tool collection and I bought some things from him. That had to be back in the 1990s and he has since passed. I happened to run into his daughter several months ago and she told me her mother would be glad to let me look at those old tools again.

That was months ago. Two days ago I called the 90 year old widow and she showed me that marvelous collection. Of course along the way she talked my ear off… I’ll probably never be able to wear eye glasses.

Anyway… all her stuff was really quite valuable and more than I wanted to pay but I told her I wanted to help her and told her and I knew someone in the auctioneer business who could sell all her stuff for her. She was very excited and thanked me because she had been trying to sell it for a long time and had given up.

So I took a lot of photos and messaged them to my friend and added that I would have liked to purchase some of her things but did not feel comfortable making an offer that might be viewed as taking advantage of a widow. BTW, this same auctioneer had helped another widow I identified for him. Here was my friend’s response…

“… you are one of the few people I know that won’t do that. Most do and it’s usually a relative or a real good friend that has no problem taking advantage of someone”

How sad.

Most of our widows today have plenty to eat but there’s also plenty of other things we can do the help. Look for those opportunities to help and to not take advantage of a widow.