relationships and community on Widows

Our God is a righteous Judge who presides over all the earth. He defends the weak and the fatherless. He upholds the cause of the poor and the oppressed. He rescues the weak and the needy and delivers...

Leader: Blessed are those whose help is the God of Jacob, People: whose hope is in the Lord their God, Leader: who made heaven and earth, People: the sea, and all that is in them, Leader: who ...

The marriage of Queen Victoria and Albert (otherwise known as Francis Albert Augustus Charles Emmanuel — quite a mouthful!) was one for the ages. Their love and devotion to each other was remarkable, ...

Leader: How good it is to sing praises to our God! People: Great are You, Lord and mighty in power. You understand everything about each one of us. You heal the brokenhearted and bind up our wounds....

Living with a family wounded by a loss you can't remember is like sitting behind a tall person at a movie theater. The people around you are laughing, crying, reacting to something, but you have n...

God—our Father ... our Savior ... our Counselor and Friend: Thank you for daring to meet us at the most unlikely places, and in the most unexpected times of our lives. Thank you for redeeming our pain...

Leader: Sing to God, sing praises to his name; People: Lift up a song to him who rides through the deserts; his name is the Lord; exult before him! Leader: Father of the fatherless and protector of...

In Paul’s day the church quarreled over the Jewish law and over genealogies, over meat sacrificed to idols and sabbath practices, and over favoritism shown to the rich patrons and negligence shown to ...

Joseph exhibited the true spirit of adoption. It is a vivid picture both of God’s adoption of us as His children in Christ, but also the call every believer has in welcoming into our homes and communi...

Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe ...

We bring before you, O Lord, the troubles and perils of people and nations, the sighing of prisoners and captives, the sorrows of the bereaved, the necessities of strangers, the helplessness of the we...

Watch, dear Lord, with those who wake, or watch, or weep [tonight], and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend your sick ones, O Lord Christ, rest your weary ones. Bless your dying one...

Sam died and left $50,000 in his will for an elaborate funeral. As the last attenders left, Sam’s wife, Rose, turned to her oldest friend, Sadie, and said, “Well, I’m sure Sam would be pleased.” “I’...

The world has enough women who know how to do their hair. It needs women who know how to do hard and holy things.

Paul tells the bride in Ephesians 6:10-12 that her enemies are 'not...flesh and blood,' but the unseen spiritual forces of evil and darkness. She is called to arm herself for battle, to 'b...

I shall look at the world through tears. Perhaps I shall see things that dry-eyed I could not see.

Divorced couples in Albuquerque, New Mexico, can take advantage of a new business in town. The company is called Freedom Rings: Jewelry for the Divorced. Founded by jeweler and divorcee Lynn Peters, t...

So much has been said and sung of beautiful young girls, why doesn't somebody wake up to the beauty of old women?

If you have a sister and she dies, do you stop saying you have one? Or are you always a sister, even when the other half of the equation is gone?

A man was dying and he called his wife to his bedside. He affectionately told her he loved her but he also had to confess something to her. “I haven’t been 100% faithful to you in our marriage. I’m so...

The marginalized and downtrodden receive special insights. They are the ones who can see the pain and the injustice that are killing the world. It is to these voices that we must turn

Those who grieve find comfort in weeping and in arousing their sorrow until the body is too tired to bear the inner emotions.

A good friend of mine lost her child recently. Unspeakable, seismic sadness. When she called, I listened in stunned silence as she told me what had happened. My mind was racing, trying to comprehend t...

He that loves not his wife and children feeds a lioness at home, and broods a nest of sorrows.

Arwen to Aragorn: "I would rather share one lifetime with you than face all the ages of this world alone."

Blessed are the cracked, for they shall let in the light.

Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o-er wrought heart and bids it break.

Here then from both James and Paul is a central witness drawn from all of Scripture: God has sovereignly chosen to work in the world by beginning with the weak who are on the ‘outside,’ not the powerf...

Was ever grief like mine?

We fixed up the house and swapped it for another house and then another and then another. During the first ten years we were married, we moved six times. It was like being in the witness protection pr...