Tuesday, December 19, 2017

Cultivating a Widow's Heart

UV 2859/10000 Cultivating a Widow’s Heart
And shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them?
Luke 18 v 7

God is not partial. But, He is compassionate to His chosen ones, the ones who willingly put their trust and lives in His hands. Jesus in this uni-verse is explaining the Father’s heart to His followers. Paul got the inspiration for his unique directive in I Thessalonians chapter 5 “ Pray without ceasing” from these words of our Lord and God –Jesus. We who are His elect, His chosen ones need to pray without ceasing, with all kinds of spiritual prayers, crying out day and night to the Lord. He will be patient up to a point with even the unjust but once the cries of the innocent, the victims of atrocities, oppression, exploitation reaches His ears, He will not sit idle on His throne of justice and mercy.

The Lord God heard the cries of day and night of the descendants of His chosen ones, the Hebrew slaves of ancient Egypt and sent an earthly messiah or saviour or leader in Moses to lead them into freedom. He hears the cries and groans of people burdened through history and sent His own Son Jesus, anointed with the power of the Spirit like no man before or after, to save and deliver those oppressed by sin and guilt. The greatest form of slavery is not social, political or economic but spiritual. Once the spiritual yoke of slavery is broken, all other freedoms will follow.

The widow dispossessed of her property by evil men is the very picture of helplessness. She had already suffered irreparable loss in life like Naomi of Ruth fame. Whatever little she had was being taken away from her. The injustice of it was blatant and staring one in the face. She had exhausted all her limited resources to obtain justice. She now had only one person to turn to for justice. Yet, the judge who puts of dispensing justice and finally does so only due to his desire to stop hearing the persistent cry of the widow is in order to underline the importance of persistence in faith and prayers. God is not a procrastinator but He acts in due time. He is not hard of hearing not is He hard-hearted. He is moved to tears by the plight of His children. The vindication will come in due time, His time and His way of delivering it. Justice when it comes will be certain and effective. When we pray, we need to have the widow’s heart- one of brokenness, complete faith, desperation in terms of our need but hope unending in the Lord’s justice, perseverance despite seeing no physical signs of the Lord relenting. Precious are the tears of His saints in the eyes of the Lord. The tears of Mary Magdalene were more valuable and pleasing to Jesus than the costly vial of nard perfume she poured out onto his feet.
Prateep V Philip

No comments:

Post a Comment