Our ministry this month is to visit different villages around the city where we live. Each day we spend time doing home visits before we lead a prayer meeting.
We walk through the streets, praying for men and women, old and young, sick and well. We hear small snippets of their stories. One man’s father died recently; another family had just welcomed a healthy baby boy, while a third family was in search of provision because the father was unable to work.
All of the stories pull at my heart. I wish we were able to spend more time with each family learning the intricacies of their lives, the ways they spend their time, the events and circumstances that have carried them to the very moment we are now living.
I feel this way about all of the people we meet, but on one particular day, my heart was deeply drawn to the elderly women of the village.
The widows who have no sons.
The mothers whose daughters have married and moved away.
The women who live alone with no practical way to support themselves and very little community to rely on.
(Photo credit: Emily Schwartz)
For these women, my heart breaks.
Hearing their stories felt like a step back in time. A time without the freedom I now possess as a young woman in the 21st century. My mind spun as I considered the circumstances of these beautiful women, and the reality that they didn’t have the opportunity to change the situation in which they lived. It is a life I could barely comprehend, no matter how hard I tried.
Then the Lord brought Naomi to my mind (the book of Ruth). How she was left alone after her husband and sons had all died. Naomi’s story also felt hopeless. She had no way to provide for herself and no one to provide for her. In her desperate state, she told her daughters-in-law to return to their homes so that they might find new husbands and a better life.
But there is one huge difference between Naomi’s story and the stories of the women I met that day in the village…Ruth.
In Naomi’s story, Ruth refused to leave her alone. Ruth refused to leave her mother-in-law who had become so dear to her heart.
(Photo credit: Emily Schwartz)
The women I met that day are in need of their own Ruth. Someone who loves them so much that she puts her own well being at risk in order to better their lives, providing much needed companionship.
I may never see these women again since we move to a new village each day. But with their faces ingrained in my heart, I will pray for God to provide each of them with a Ruth of their own.
I will pray for God to speak to each of their hearts about their importance, and about the life they still have left to live.
I will pray and believe in God’s provision, because I know He can do immeasurably more than I can think or ask.
