📖 James 1:27 | "...to visit orphans and widows.."

together with

Happy Monday, {{first_name | everyone}}!

Kieran here 👋

I’m excited to share that this week, we are partnering with Serving Orphans Worldwide! Having adopted our oldest son through foster care here in the US, this is a cause very close to our hearts.

Serving Orphans Worldwide (SOW) is a ministry that partners with children's homes in developing nations — places where foster care systems simply don't exist, and where these homes are often the last line of defense for vulnerable kids.

I encourage you to watch their story (3 min) as we kick off this week’s memory verse.

With that, I’ll hand it off to Payton!

In today’s email…

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Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.

James 1:27

A question to start off our week: What does God actually consider “religion”?

We’ll talk a lot about religion this week and what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ. But first, let’s do a deep dive on Jesus's brother (James).

The Author

James grew up in the same house as Jesus. Same mom. Same dinner table with bowls of figs and olive oil. Same Nazareth streets and neighborhood friends.

And for most of those years, James didn't believe a word of the claims about his brother.

John doesn't soften the blow:

Picture that. James watched Jesus teach, heal, and claim to be the Son of God and thought his older brother had lost his mind. Mark 3:21 even tells us the family literally went to "seize him" because they thought he was "out of his mind."

Then Jesus died. And then He rose.

We don't know what was said. We don't know how long it lasted. But we know what happened next — the skeptic became a servant.

James 1:1 introduces himself not as "the brother of Jesus" (though he could have) but as "a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ."

For James, Jesus went from “out of his mind” to “the Lord Jesus Christ.”

The Leader

After Peter left Jerusalem, James became the principal leader of the very first Christian community. Paul calls him one of the "pillars" alongside Peter and John (Galatians 2:9). At the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15), when the early church faced its biggest crisis (i.e., what to do with Gentile converts) it was James who spoke the decisive words and shaped the outcome.

In AD 62, during a gap between Roman governors, the high priest Ananus had James killed by stoning. The man who wrote about pure religion was murdered for practicing it.

The Setting

James wrote this letter to "the twelve tribes in the Dispersion" (1:1) — Jewish Christians scattered outside Palestine around the Mediterranean. These weren't wealthy congregations. James addresses economic injustice throughout the letter. His community was dealing with famine, persecution from Jewish religious leaders, and the kind of daily pressure that makes faith feel like a luxury you can't afford.

So when he writes about visiting orphans and widows, he's not being theoretical. His church had orphans and widows and persecution was creating more of them every year.

James didn't write a theology textbook.

He wrote something closer to Proverbs. His letter is a collection of sharp, practical wisdom sayings designed to get in your business and challenge how you live. BibleProject describes it as "twelve short teachings that call God's people to wholehearted devotion to the way of Jesus."

And verse 27 is the punchline of the whole opening chapter.

And that’s where we go tomorrow.

Throughout this week, I am going to offer different ways to apply and respond to this verse. The goal is not to do them all or to do any of them perfectly.

The goal is for this verse to get past the page and into how we actually live.

🙏 Pray

Lord, thank you for a verse that cuts through the noise. James watched you live this before he ever wrote it down. He saw what pure religion looks like in person at the dinner table, in the streets of Nazareth, in a life that never stopped caring for the overlooked. As we sit with these words this week, make us people who don't just hear your Word but do it. Amen.

In parts of Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and the Middle East, the orphan crisis is growing, and food is running out.

In some places — like Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo — violence and unrest are only making food scarcer. Children’s homes are struggling to survive in these fragile communities.

Serving Orphans Worldwide is combating the crisis, and you can help. 100% of your gift will provide hungry children and babies with nutritious meals, emergency groceries, life-saving formula, and long-term food security.

Join Serving Orphans Worldwide in feeding as many hungry orphans as possible. Donate today — just $12 feeds a child for a whole month and teaches children the gospel. Plus, Malachi Daily is matching the first $1,500 given this week!

Pay-it-forward subscribers, enjoy the song we created below to help you memorize the verse of the week!

Pay-it-forward subscribers, enjoy the song we created below to help you memorize the verse of the week!

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James spent a lifetime watching Jesus refuse to stand on the sidelines and this song captures that same restless, get-off-the-bench energy that runs all through James 1:27. Jam with us this week!

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Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.

James 1:27