For Wilshire Baptist Church
Lately I’ve been concerned about widows and orphans. No, not women and children, but that does come to mind. Let me explain.
I’m working on the final details of a new book, and in the jargon of book design and layout, a “widow” is the last line of a paragraph that sits at the top of a page, while an “orphan” is a last line of a paragraph at the bottom of a page. Visually, orphans are not so noticeable unless they are very short. But widows can look like a mistake.
There are typesetting techniques for resolving widows and orphans, most having to do with imperceptible adjustments to spacing between letters to pull words and sentences together into the same paragraph block. Major publishers put great care into this, especially for best-selling authors. For hands-on, self-publishing authors such as me that don’t have the software and the technical expertise, there’s another method: editing. Widows and orphans can be eliminated by adding or subtracting words to make sentences longer or shorter.
It’s tedious work, but it can be a good exercise for a writer because it prompts you to ask: Can I take out superfluous words and say the same thing in a more readable way? Or, can I add some words that enrich the narrative? The answer to those questions requires judgment about content and context. While the goal is a better looking book, doing the work can result in a better written book.
So what in the Charles Dickens does that have to do with real widows and orphans and others in need? The answer is in another book – the New Testament book of James where we read these words: “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.”
Most of us – okay, many of us – have a surplus of wealth to share with those who have little. But we like our stuff. We work hard for our stuff. We like what our stuff says about us; it creates a narrative of who we are and what we have accomplished. We like it when our life reads like a good book.
But if we’re reading that other book – and comprehending the sub-plot that is not so hidden between the lines – we know we are called to help those in need. That requires some editing of our lives; cutting out what is not truly needed so we can give from our abundance to those with little, or expanding our lives to give our time and energy to causes that bring relief. In doing so, we help write the story of the Kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven; we add chapters of a more abundant life to people whose stories are headed toward an ending that we wouldn’t want for ourselves.
In editing our lives for the good of others, we end up with a better narrative of who we are; more healthy and holy. A lot of that stuff we want – and the pursuit of it – can have a way of staining us, as James suggests. And who really wants that when the last chapter of their life is read?