Why Widows and Orphans…?

This week, I found myself using a phrase that Daniel Singleton often uses… and it has never hit me so hard about what it means.

Daniel Singleton often says that faith communities are there to help the widow and the orphan – those that are in need of community, support, love and care.

Last week I was on the train, coming back from central London, and I heard a girl talking about her father – how he wasn’t around and how she wasn’t going to buy him a Father’s Day card because he doesn’t deserve one.  She went on to talk about him in such a horrible way, I became quite upset.

This stuck with me for a few days and while I was in Manchester this week, I was chatting about the role of faith communities.  It suddenly hit me, the reason why I was so upset was this girl was in desperate need of family, love and support and couldn’t get it from her family.

This is why faith communities are so important, setting religion aside they love and support those that can’t get love and support from others.  They love the unlovable, encourage the struggling and provide shelter (sometimes practically) to those that don’t have any.

At FaithAction, we work hard to support faith based organisations because of this – because of their desire to support the widow and the orphan in communities and they are often the only ones who will.