When God is Your Only Hope

I was blessed to spend three weeks in Africa this summer and while I was there I met many wonderful people. Two women however, will forever be etched in my memory. I want to tell you about them and for their privacy, I will call them Ghati and Robi.  I was visiting homes with my friend Suzie and our Maasai translator when we met these two precious women.

The first one we met was Ghati. She welcomed us into her home and we began to share the gospel with her. She told us that her husband had forbidden her from going to church. She said that he beat her and that she was afraid of him. She fell into our arms and sobbed. Her neighbor, Robi, shared a similar story. Robi’s husband was an alcoholic and would come home at night to their one room home and beat her mercilessly while her two small children watched. She said she was afraid he would kill her. I asked her if she had spoken with her father about this (because this is a patriarchal society) and she said that her father had told her, “You married him. You deal with it.”

Can you imagine?  My heart broke at this news. Here were two women who truly had no where to turn. In their culture it is acceptable and often encouraged that husbands beat their wives so no one in law enforcement would come to their aid. Their own families had turned a blind eye. As they begged me for help and for answers, I was at a total loss. I shared with them about times that I’ve felt desperate and hopeless. We began to pray with them and we told these ladies that while God may not change their circumstances, he wanted to change them. He had promised the his presence in the midst of the suffering. We explained to them that as they grew closer to the Lord and did their best to honor their husbands (who were not worthy of honor) then they could pray that their husbands would see the change in them and be drawn to Christ. Truly, there only hope is divine intervention.

I still get teary-eyed thinking of these ladies. I ask you to join me in praying that God would not only change them, but that he would change their circumstances.