Think of those people you hold most dear in your heart.  Who are they? Family members, no doubt.  Probably some friends; perhaps a few co-workers. There might even be a few groups you have special feelings for: a graduating class, an interest group, a certain sports team, people of a particular life condition.  What would you say to such people?  Probably words of encouragement, gratitude, sentiments of hope and pride, and, for those most special, feelings expressing tenderness and abiding love.

    Now think of those individuals or groups of people you tend to avoid and think of as unworthy, defective, ignorant, troublesome, even malicious.  For some of us, they may be some of the same people in the first group.  They may be folks of a certain ethnicity, life circumstance, political persuasion, unwholesome habit, or gender identification.  Now what would you say to them?  Most of us wouldn’t bother saying anything; we steer clear of such “undesirables.”  If we do say anything, they’re typically words of condemnation, judgment or advice.

    As for God as presented in the Bible, the shocking and unsettling news is God often holds most dear in the heart those whom God’s people avoided: widows, orphans, tax collectors, prostitutes, the diseased, and especially Gentiles.  Even today, we tend to hold up as virtuous or evil certain individuals and/or groups about which God may have very different feelings than us “righteous and saved believers.”  But it is good news that God has a special place in the heart for such misguided, ignorant and disdainful types, for that means that God cares deeply about you and me.  Does this change what you would say and how you might treat those “undesirables others” in your life?  What personal sin are you going to begin working on changing today?

 

Praise the Lord!
Praise the Lord, O my soul!

I will praise the Lord as long as I live;
   I will sing praises to my God all my life long.

Do not put your trust in princes,
   in mortals, in whom there is no help.

When their breath departs, they return to the earth;
   on that very day their plans perish.

Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob,
   whose hope is in the Lord their God,

who made heaven and earth,
   the sea, and all that is in them;
who keeps faith for ever;

   who executes justice for the oppressed;
   who gives food to the hungry.

The Lord sets the prisoners free;

    the Lord opens the eyes of the blind.
The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down;
   the Lord loves the righteous.

The Lord watches over the strangers;
   he upholds the orphan and the widow,
   but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.

The Lord will reign for ever,
   your God, O Zion, for all generations.
Praise the Lord!

 

Then the word of the Lord came to him, saying,

‘Go now to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and live there; for I have commanded a widow there to feed you.’

So he set out and went to Zarephath. When he came to the gate of the town, a widow was there gathering sticks; he called to her and said, ‘Bring me a little water in a vessel, so that I may drink.’\As she was going to bring it, he called to her and said, ‘Bring me a morsel of bread in your hand.’\But she said, ‘As the Lord your God lives, I have nothing baked, only a handful of meal in a jar, and a little oil in a jug; I am now gathering a couple of sticks, so that I may go home and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it, and die.’

Elijah said to her, ‘Do not be afraid; go and do as you have said; but first make me a little cake of it and bring it to me, and afterwards make something for yourself and your son.

For thus says the Lord the God of Israel: The jar of meal will not be emptied and the jug of oil will not fail until the day that the Lord sends rain on the earth.’

She went and did as Elijah said, so that she as well as he and her household ate for many days.

The jar of meal was not emptied, neither did the jug of oil fail, according to the word of the Lord that he spoke by Elijah.

After this the son of the woman, the mistress of the house, became ill; his illness was so severe that there was no breath left in him.

She then said to Elijah, ‘What have you against me, O man of God? You have come to me to bring my sin to remembrance, and to cause the death of my son!’

But he said to her, ‘Give me your son.’ He took him from her bosom, carried him up into the upper chamber where he was lodging, and laid him on his own bed.

He cried out to the Lord, ‘O Lord my God, have you brought calamity even upon the widow with whom I am staying, by killing her son?’

Then he stretched himself upon the child three times, and cried out to the Lord, ‘O Lord my God, let this child’s life come into him again.’

The Lord listened to the voice of Elijah; the life of the child came into him again, and he revived.

Elijah took the child, brought him down from the upper chamber into the house, and gave him to his mother; then Elijah said, ‘See, your son is alive.’

So the woman said to Elijah, ‘Now I know that you are a man of God, and that the word of the Lord in your mouth is truth.’