Look around you and you don’t need to look far to see need. With the world that has shrunk because of social media, our neighbours can be living thousands of miles away and yet are very close to us; they are as reachable as the neighbour next door. Even in 2026, as the world advances, many still spend every day wondering how they can eat, where they will get water, and how they will pay their debt.
Who is easily overlooked? Who is easily exploited?
“Do not take advantage of the widow or the fatherless. 23 If you do and they cry out to me, I will certainly hear their cry. 24 My anger will be aroused, and I will kill you with the sword; your wives will become widows and your children fatherless.” (Exodus 22 v 23-24)
The widow and the fatherless were the most exposed people in Israel’s world. They were easy to overlook and easy to exploit. No one would object if these low-status people didn’t get a fair deal. Nobody except God.
Not long ago (chapter 2, to be precise), they cried to God for help as a nation. God heard their cry and came down to act.
Now He tells a newly freed people that, as the rescued, they would not be allowed to become oppressors.
Actually, the warning is severe. Those who make others widows and orphans through injustice will see their own families face the same fate. This shows how God takes the powerless seriously, more seriously than we often do.
This is who God is. The psalmist calls Him “a father to the fatherless, a defender of widows” (Psalm 68:5).
So the question is simple. If God hears the cry of the vulnerable, are we listening? “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress” (James 1:27).
The people we overlook are the very people God never overlooks.
The cry you choose not to hear is a cry He has already heard.
Most people who are downtrodden by abusive power are those who had little power to begin with; God gives them particular attention and has a special place in his heart for them.
If God’s character includes zeal for justice that leads him to tender love and close involvement with the socially weak, then what should God’s people be like? They must be people who are likewise passionately concerned for the weak and vulnerable.
Sometimes, as Christians, we care more about moral living, personal righteousness, and obeying the laws of purity than about living out the commandment to do justice, love mercy, and speak up for those who cannot speak up for themselves.
It’s time for us to get bothered about what really bothers God.
