What Pure Means

The kids had just finished up their lunch, and if I was smart, I would have kept to our regular schedule and settled them into their beds for an afternoon nap.  But the gorgeous weather outside was calling to me, tempting me to enjoy the sunshine on my face, even if only for a few minutes.

After quickly tying my hair into a ponytail, I unfolded the double stroller and buckled the two little ones into it, and helped the older ones fasten their bike helmets into place.  The sun and fresh air that day felt just as glorious as I had hoped it would!

We hadn’t even reached the end of the block, however, before the delightful moment ended.  The baby started crying, and when I stopped to pick him up, he vomited all over me.  Meanwhile, the ones on their bikes were getting a little bit too far ahead for comfort, and I yelled out a reminder to them to Stop at the corner! 

My fashionable neighbor arrived home at that exact moment, and I’m sorry to say that inwardly I cringed a little bit.  She climbed out of her Cheerios-free car and walked towards me, her heels click-clacking on the sidewalk, a dazzling smile on her face.  I felt instantly ugly. 

While I struggled to clean up and comfort the baby, and look frantically down the street towards the diminishing figures of my children on their bikes, she stood right next to me trying to engage in conversation.  In her hand was a leather Bible and a cute little flowered notebook. 

Apparently, she had just arrived home from a weekly ladies’ Bible study.  The one that she led.  At the church where her husband was a pastor.  Great.  Now I felt instantly ugly and inferior.  I am certain that as she was standing there looking at me, she was thinking to herself, This lady needs Jesus!

Because the children who are always with me have varying sizes, shapes, and skin tones, I am pretty much a walking advertisement for orphan care.   When I confirmed that yes, these little ones with me were indeed my foster children, she blurted, Oh, that’s wonderful that you do that!  My husband and I have talked about getting involved in foster care, but we wouldn’t want to give up our date nights.

Um, I’m not a Bible scholar, and I honestly cannot remember the last time I attended a ladies’ Bible study, but I’m pretty sure that the leather Bible my neighbor was carrying in her hand that day doesn’t say too much about date nights, while it has a whole lot to say about taking care of orphans. 

In fact, one of the most frequently quoted verses about caring for orphans is James 1:27, which says, “Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.”

I’ve always wondered about this verse.  It seems like the first part of the verse – visiting orphans and widows in their affliction – doesn’t really have anything to do with the second part of the verse – keeping oneself unstained from the world.

But then, at closer look, there is a pretty clear contrast:

Pure religion. . . stained by the world.

Undefiled . . . defiled.

It seems like a paradox, really.  I mean, caring for orphans can get, quite literally, very messy!  It means strewn toys and dirty socks and stinky shoes and stray LEGO pieces and pencil shavings and yes, spilled Cheerios. 

Even more so, caring for orphans means caring for someone else’s child, picking the lice out of their hair, cleaning them up after they’ve been sick, clipping their dirty toenails, bandaging their bloody wounds, wiping their runny noses.  All without knowing exactly what those bodily fluids have been exposed to. ¹

For those who care for medically fragile children, it might mean suctioning secretions from a trach or cleaning up stomach juices when a feeding tube accidentally gets pulled out.  It might mean emptying a colostomy bag.  I will never forget the moment when I was rocking a baby who had a shunt in her brain, when suddenly I felt something warm and sticky.  I could see that the shunt was leaking, but I could barely comprehend that someone else’s cerebral fluid was actually dripping on my arm!  I thought for a moment that I was going to pass out.

And oh, the dirty laundry!  No matter how many loads are washed each day, the mountains of clothes never seem to shrink.  Sometimes I think that if I have to pick up yet another wet towel that was left crumbled on the floor, I just might scream.  And always, always, there are sheets.  There is rarely a day (and many nights too!) that goes by that I am not washing wet or soiled sheets. ²

This?!  The dirty and the stained and the genuinely disgusting?  This is what the Bible calls pure?

This is not what any of us want!  We all want homes that are neat and tidy.  We want our lives and our calendars to be predictable and comfortable and convenient.  We want to have clean cars and carry cute flowered notebooks.  And yes, we want to have date nights!  There is nothing wrong with any of those things!

But when neat and tidy becomes our goal?  When keeping our distance from the messy becomes our excuse to not get involved?  Our attempts to keep our hands clean just might show that our hearts are stained by the world.  Impure.  Defiled.

In our Western culture, we have social services.  We have structures in place that protect vulnerable children by placing them in safe and loving foster homes.  However, having our most weak and defenseless children in foster homes also means that they are safely tucked away where we don’t need to see them or think about them very much.  We don’t need to touch them.

It’s easy to get comfortable in our little suburban neighborhoods and forget that there is an entire world of hurting children who need love and physical care and nurturing.  Children who need the permanency of a family.   If my neighbor was walking, not across her manicured lawn, but down a trash-strewn alleyway in Haiti, and if she saw a hungry child looking at her, pleading with his big dark eyes, would she honestly say to him, But what about my date nights?   Probably not.  Her comment that day, while innocent enough, shows a heart that has been stained by the world.

What if we saw caring for orphans the way that God sees it?  Because James 1:27 specifically says, this is what pure means in the sight of God . . .

Pure means stepping into the messy, welcoming the ones who are unwashed and stinky.  Or as James 1:27 says, the “afflicted.”  Pure means, quite literally, touching the dirty and the wounded and maybe even the contagious. 

Pure means having a house that is never completely cleaned, the never-ending loads of laundry.  It means washing soiled sheets in the middle of the night.

Pure means sometimes being frazzled, wearing a stained shirt, quickly tying hair back into a ponytail, yelling to the kids down the sidewalk to Stop at the corner!

My neighbor was absolutely right about one thing . . . I do need Jesus!  Every hour I need Him, not only for His strength and wisdom and perseverance in the midst of the chaos, but more importantly, I need Him to remind me of what is true.  I need Him to remind me that in the mundane, there is purpose.  It matters.  When I feel ugly and inferior, I need Him to remind me that what I am doing is lovely.  My proverbial hands, messy though they may be, are busy with the important and the eternal.

This chaos?  These kids?  The messes that I am continually cleaning up?

This is pure.

1.            Looking for a gift for a new foster parent?  I would recommend lots of band-aids, disinfectant wipes, boxes of medical gloves and a good quality carpet cleaner!

2.            Foster parents do hundreds of loads of laundry over the course of the year.  Making laundry soap is far less expensive than buying it!