With Arms Wide Open to the Poor and Needy of their Land
Deuteronomy 15:11
War has consequences – not least the increasing number of widows and orphans that are an inevitable result of the indiscriminate violence with which it is associated. Who knows how many have been the result of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine? Who, that is, apart from God, Who knows each and every one by name and, like the loving Heavenly Father He is, comes tenderly alongside all those that grieve.
Take, for example, Tatyana Liferova.
With her husband still fighting on the frontline, Tatyana, together with her two young children, found a way out from the occupied city of Mariupol and made her way to Izmail, a city close to the Romanian border. But by the time she arrived, she was a widow.
With no friends or relatives to stay with, she was welcomed by the Christians at a local church. At first, so traumatised were they by all that they had experienced, the children, during church meetings, would never leave their mother’s side. Over time however, their confidence grew and they gradually became less withdrawn.
It was a wonderful change, one that Tatyana was delighted to witness. As she did so, a wonderful change was beginning to take place in Tatyana’s heart too. At the church meetings she found that she was regularly being encouraged by what she heard from God’s word, and she began to testify to others about how inspiring she found it.
Furthermore, her elder son, nine year old Viacheslav, asked for a Bible and proceeded to attend a camp specifically run for children of families of the fallen.
Through the compassionate response of believers, those who by their actions demonstrate the love of Christ, God by his Spirit, is reaching out to those who suffer. Please pray for Tatyana, her children, and many others like them, that they might all find lasting peace in Jesus Christ.
‘Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.’