IN the state of widowhood there lies a thought of deep woe and crying homesickness.
At least if the previous life together in marriage, that was dissolved by death, even without being ideal, yet bore an ideal tint.
This is not said, as though there were no broad stream of domestic happiness and wealth of soul proceeding from marriage; but because more than anything else conjugal love has been pictured poetically, and thereby quickened in many a youthful heart ideals and illusions, which later on depress the reality of life.
For, truly, at times one finds a man and a woman, both of an equal highly-attuned spirit, whose married life seems to approach the ideal, and even the poetic ideal; but this is always an exception, and by far the greater part of marriages do not reach so far.
Actually thus the antithesis between happy and unhappy marriages lies somewhat lower; and one may prize the home already happy, where marriage grows and flourishes in personal attachment, in hearty sympathy, in oneness of faith and sense and spiritual direction, and where it is the mutual intent to make one another happy.
Already then married life bears an ideal tint.
And when death is sent to such a family, to take the husband away, so that, with or without children, the wife remains behind, then that widow is the image of dismay and aching emptiness, which does not always crush, sometimes even lifts up the soul to God, but which always asks for support, and calls for comfort.
By the crying loss in so cutting a way the equipoise in her soul is broken; and all that is within her calls for something, by which that equipoise can be restored.
THEREFORE in His Word God comes to such a widow, and tells her, that He will be a judge of the widows (Ps. 68, 5).
It does not read, what many false readers have made of it, that God the Lord shall be the widows’ Husband.
For that thought in Scripture there is even no room. The Lord is the Bridegroom of His church, to Israel an Husband, but for the desolate and bereft, the saddened and lonesome widow He is a Judge, even as to her orphans, that remain behind, He will be a Father.
That glorious promise therefore does not come, to draw to God the love of the woman’s heart, that first went out to the husband. Even of such a transfer of love from the husband to God there can be no mention. Also before, also in marriage stood high and far, also above the love wherewith this widow cleaved to her husband, the love for God and her Savior; and where this was otherwise, it was not good.
Also to that widow so long as her husband lived, and not just now that he died, applied the high commandment that she should love God above all else, and her husband as herself. And to her also applied the word of Christ: “He who loveth husband or wife above Me, is not worthy of Me.” If then there is a young woman, who in her first overwhelming love had forgotten God because of her husband, and had directed the first, the richest, the highest love of her heart to her husband instead of to her God, she fell into sin therewith, and she must seek atonement for this in the blood of the Lamb, and it may never be said, that her love for her husband was ideal, but rather with contrition and brokenness of soul it must be confessed, that her heart has led her astray.
WITH a widow therefore it makes such a deepgoing difference, not merely whether with the affectionate love of her heart, she has loved her husband, but especially also, whether with the highest love of her heart she has always loved her God, even above her husband.
Were this not so, then of course her distress is dreadful; for then, at least to her own sense of soul, with her husband she has lost everything; and then the first interest which at the grave of her husband she has to take in hand, is to convert herself to her God, and on His altar offer up to Him the so long withheld love of her heart.
With such widows in most cases during the first days you meet with certain despair, with passionate grief, in which speaks bitterness against her lot and a rebellious complaint against her God.
It storms then so bitterly in such a stricken heart. A God Who in His majesty draws near to comfort her, and Who can make no approach to her, except with a soul-wounding reproach. And in her troubled heart these two struggle in against each other. Now she will confess her guilt before her God, and again her heart inclines to break out in rebellion against God, and the sin of earlier days itself makes it impossible for the harmony, the peace, the eternal Sabbath to descend into her wild grief.
IT is altogether different, when a widow, also before she became a widow, has given her God a high place, her God even above all else, and has devoted to Him, her Father in the heavens, the first, the best, and holiest love of her womanly heart.
Then in her estimation it was always: God first, and after that my husband, as given me of God. Then it was every morning and every evening a giving thanks to God, for the rich possession for her heart she had received in her husband. And also, then it was, year after year, ever again a kneeling down together with that husband, to offer up to their God, in Whom the soul of each found her holiest point of union, the mingled offering of praise and love.
And, of course, when then the greatest distress of her life comes upon her, that God, Who gave her that husband, takes away again that husband from her side, then the loss is indeed unspeakable, and that transition truly dreadful, and that emptiness of her heart bitter to be borne; but yet for no moment can her heart grow rigid and cold, for it still kept all along the glow of its first and holiest love, i.e., the love for her God and her Lord.
A child, that in a troubled moment of his life still has his father with him, is altogether differently off, from a child, that must struggle through that same distress altogether forsaken.
And such is also here the antithesis.
A widow, who all the years of her married happiness continued to give God the first place in her heart, is, when the blow falls, indeed a child, that is cast into deep sorrow, but a child that in that sorrow still has her Father with her, can cast herself upon her God, and in the glow of that highest love of itself finds comfort with the grief, which by being cut off from her second love came upon the stricken heart.
YOU observe this, indeed, when you watch such a widow during the first days and weeks of her mourning.
For while the other one, who had given to her husband what was owing to God alone, bewildered and passionately cries and complains, you notice at once with a widow, who feared God and loved her God, what makes you say: No, that woman is not forsaken, she is not alone; and the love, that wells up from her heart, always yet possesses the highest object, toward which it went forth.
Thence that calmness in the sorrow, that peace amidst the terror of her heart, that plenitude of soul in the face of all that was taken from her. That restraint and self-control for what with the other became passionate and impetuous grief. Yonder something of the wildness, wherewith the lioness roars over her dead whelps, here the submissive surrender of a Christian woman, who enjoyed so deeply what the Lord gave and allowed her, but now also understands, that nothing, thus also not that tenderly loved husband, was her property; that everything belongs to God; and that she would not love her God to the full, if she placed her husband above Him, or if she wanted to keep that husband for herself, against the Lord’s counsel.
BUT it is implied in the promise, that God will be a Judge unto her, and of this a tender-hearted widow has need.
She truly gave God always her first love, but in all earthly concerns she leaned upon her husband. She was subject unto him. He did everything. From him direction went out. She followed. She could not do otherwise. She had to do like this, otherwise she would have been no wife, and in her husband she would have had no real husband.
So God had ordained it. Such was with her the practice of faith also in her marriage. But now it cannot be otherwise, but that by the death of the husband, whom she so tenderly loved, and on whom she leaned so unconditionally, that support has fallen away from her.
She is now like ivy, that grew about the trunk of the oak. But see, that oak has been felled at the root, and the ivy lies on the ground.
And now her God will reveal Himself unto her in a new aspect of wealth. Inwardly He will raise her up and be Himself the trunk, to which the ivy can raise itself up again.
And this stands expressed in that forceful word, that God will be her Judge. For, of course, it is most trying to a widow, when, now that she is deprived of her husband, the outside world will take advantage of her weakness, by dishonorable dealings in the administration of her affairs.
This would render her helpless.
But no, then she does not stand helpless, for from heaven her God gives her the promise: I will be your Judge.
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