Care for our parents and grandparents is a fundamental life responsibility. Part of our worship of God is also to sacrificially care for widows in our close family. It should be a well-known fact around the globe that Christian families care for their own. This pleases Christ.

1 Timothy 5:3-16 is packed with implications for local churches and especially older saints but is rarely discussed. Economic prosperity often buries this rich and very practical passage. It may be that many churches that have not taken this passage seriously because of prosperity will soon do so.
I encourage you to take the time to read these verses carefully before continuing: 1 Timothy 5:3-16.[1]
As we take the time to understand this text and consider its implications, we find that it is relevant for every cultural context. We might also might find ourselves surprised that we have overlooked such valuable instruction.
Paul taught Timothy about how local churches are supposed to function. In doing this, he included a lengthy passage on the support of widows. In it Paul teaches us about the role of widows, how to support them, and also gives us principles that are applicable to all of God’s senior saints. We will spend the next several articles meditating on this passage together.  You might want to read the intro article to this series as well: https://rootedthinking.com/2022/12/20/still-fruitful-the-value-of-senior-saints/.
A continual need through the centuries.
Financial support for needy widows is something followers of God have taken seriously since the beginning. The Bible teaches us that those who are genuinely righteous protect and help care for the poor, particularly widows and orphans.[2] Local churches are responsible to financially assist impoverished widows and orphans within its membership.[3] Just after Pentecost, the church in Jerusalem was zealous in this regard.[4] There were political and cultural reasons why Jerusalem had so many widows at that time, so the Jerusalem church needed immediate guidelines about it (Acts 6).
Churches throughout history have supported widows, often as a part of their church budget. Though deacons were originally elected to oversee this kind of ministry in Jerusalem, churches have generally given this responsibility to certain women in the church.
In 1 Timothy 5, Paul answers this question in detail: How and when are local churches to financially support widows?
What it means to be a widow in much of the world.
Paul’s instructions to Timothy begin with the definition of a “true widow,” the kind of widow that local churches are responsible to help. Paul then shows us how to prioritize funds for this purpose.
Becoming a widow was a tragic event in New Testament times, a reality that is just as tragic for women in much of our world today. For many, to be widowed meant at least relative poverty, maybe even abject poverty. To survive, provide for their children, and avoid shame, women usually remarried as soon as possible. Jobs providing enough income to avoid poverty were unknown. Some cultures have not even allowed women to earn wages. Imagine being in this situation! But it is often worse than this.
Read More
Related Posts:

Words are needed for our growth in sanctification because the words of Scripture are “profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16–17). Thus, words are indispensable for the creation and maturation of the new life in Christ.

In 2018, in the territory of the Kimyal tribe in West Papua, a plane landed. It was carrying the most precious cargo that the Kimyals could imagine. Was it food, medicine, or perhaps some advanced technology? No, the plane brought the first Bibles in the Kimyal language—the words they had awaited for forty-seven years. You can watch the video of how the community celebrated the plane and its prized shipment. People were crying in joy and praising the triune God whose words they held in their hands.
This is the sight that we seem to forget in our Western world. Bibles are all around us, but most of them are unopened and unread. Even well-meaning Christians think that in evangelism we need to be sparing with the use of the Bible and show the gospel’s message with our lives instead. Think of the popular phrase that catches this sentiment: “Preach the gospel at all times; if necessary, use words.”
The phrase is usually (but incorrectly) attributed to Francis of Assisi. It is intended at least to emphasize that our words and deeds should be linked together. We should not preach one thing and do another, but we must live by the words that we say. And this is all true. The saying, however, is often used to mean more than that. It states that there are two different ways to preach the gospel: by our lives and by our lips, suggesting that words are not always necessary to communicate the gospel.
How shall we think about this? First, this thought flies in the face of the common teaching of the Bible. Take euangelizomai, for example, the Greek word from which we get the word evangelism. It means “to proclaim, to announce, to tell the gospel message.” This activity can be done only in verbal form. Thus, not surprisingly, we find that the Christian life, from beginning to end, grows out of the Word of God. Peter assures us that “you have been born again . . . through the living and abiding word of God” (1 Peter 1:23). Paul tells us that “faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Rom. 10:17). Through the hearing of the Word of God, we were regenerated and given faith.
Read More
Related Posts:

Written by Kelly M. Kapic |
Tuesday, January 4, 2022
God delights in our finitude: he is not embarrassed or shocked by our creatureliness. Since he is not apologetic about it, we should stop apologizing for it ourselves.

Creaturely finitude is less an idea we discover and more of a reality we run into. All of us bounce between the illusion that we are in control and the world’s demonstration that we are not. Whether through tragedy or simply as the result of aging, we all are repeatedly reminded that we are fragile and dependent creatures. What we do matters, and we can be resilient. We can and do change things. But when we suppose that we can control all our circumstances, we soon find that we can’t. We don’t say the words, but we live as though the weight of the world were on our own shoulders. And it exhausts us. Behind the patient grin on our faces we hide a lingering rage about the endless demands that must be met, unrealized dreams, and relational disappointments.
The Crucial Question
Here we face a crucial question: Does this dissatisfaction always mean that we have sinned, or is something else going on? Are we required to overcome these perceived shortcomings? Some treat these limitations as indicating a moral deficiency or as an obstacle in a competition that can and should be conquered. One common response in the West is to seek self-improvement through greater organization in our lives. We skim the internet for short articles on time management, since we long ago gave up on reading whole books. Sometimes we decide to get up earlier or stay up later, hoping to add another hour or two of productivity to our lives. Since we can’t put more hours into the day, we try to change ourselves. We try to do more, be more. Normally at this point in the story we draw attention to how much TV the average American watches, how much time is lost consuming mindless digital content and games. But what if our problem is not time management? What if rather than serving as the cause of our problems, the draw of mind-numbing screen time was a sign of a deeper malady? Maybe such escapism reveals a sickness in our souls that we have been neglecting. And rather than just being a problem for the “world” out there, these are signs to which Christians should also pay attention. I think we have a massive problem, but it is not a time-management issue. It is a theological and pastoral problem.
Read More