Hope And Justice When Faced With Difficulty And Injustice – Life Lessons From The Persistent Widow – Parable.

Difficulty, adversity and hard times are part of life. We can’t avoid pain, disappointment, anguish, grief or calamity who-ever we are and where-ever we live. Sooner or later, these negatives will find each of us regardless of our class or station in Life. However, we need not despair the storms of life come our way. When faced with adversity, we can find comfort, justice, hope, love, joy and peace in the Lord Jesus Christ.

In the Christian journey of faith, there will be times when our faith will come under attack from the enemy. Times when we will feel hopeless and in despair because of seeming injustices done to us. And maybe there will also be times when we pray to God for something and he seem’s silent and distant.

We might even fast and go without various pleasures for days without any change or improvement in our situation. It can be frustrating and very tempting to give up our faith and hope in the Lord when situations like these arise.

A few days ago I had a conversation with a friend who was going through some difficulties and she needed hope, comfort, inspiration and motivation to keep going. During our talk, one statement seemed to keep recurring, and it was, “Where do I find hope and comfort in the midst of all this chaos?

She kept telling me, “God seems to be silent this time. He has been faithful but this time it feels like he has disappeared.” She went further to say, “I’m not a bad person and I feel like I have done everything right. I go to Church regularly and though I can’t say I’m perfect, I know that I’m not committing any conscious sins. I feel righteous and yet I keep wondering why God doesn’t hear me. Isn’t he supposed to hear the prayers of the righteous?”

“It’s getting harder and harder to keep believing and going on as my situation seems to get worse.” I could empathize with her. I too had experienced situations in my life when I felt hopeless, alone and abandoned.

So, as we talked, the parable of the persistent widow came to mind because it was a particular one that had helped me to keep being persistent despite various difficulties I had faced in life. In my own words, I call the persistent widow, “The woman who refused to say NO when everything around her was pressuring her to say YES and to quit.”

I call her the woman who chose not to give up despite the odds stacked against her. She is a testament to the power of persistence in breaking rocks and hardships. Her story is a testimony to the power of prayer to change situations and circumstances.

Luke one of Jesus’s twelve disciples writes her story. She was a widow who was faced with an adversity (he doesn’t tell us what the adversity was) and this great adversity drove her to seek help and justice from a Judge.

Unfortunately, this Judge kept turning her down and refusing her requests. Yet despite all this, she refused to be deterred. She kept pushing and pushing. Some may falsely call her behavior stubborn but she wasn’t stubborn like King Saul. To the contrary she was devoted like King David.

A singular devotion that kept her persistent until she finally got what she needed. The Parable, reminds us that our God is not cruel. Our God is a God of compassion and justice. Our God hears our cries and various pleas, and one day soon, he will give us the justice we need.

Are you facing an adversity and a hard situation?

Are you having difficulty maintaining your faith in Jesus because of a calamity or crisis?

Are you seeking and looking for comfort for your aches and pains?

Well, I have a simple answer for you and his name is Jesus. Go to Jesus and tell him what the challenge is. Talk to him. Seek him. Plead with him. Search for him. Pray to him unceasingly! His word says if we seek him with our hearts, we shall find him.

But from there you will seek the Lord your God, and you will find Him if you seek Him with all your heart and with all your soul.

Deuteronomy 4:29

The Parable Of The Persistent Widow:

Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up.

He said: “In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’ “For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care what people think,

yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually come and attack me!'”

And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says.

And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off?

I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”

Luke: 18. 1-8

Hannah

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