Widowhood in youth is a dreadful experience and very hard to bear.  Alas, through wars, disease, and famine, it is still a common experience all over the world, as many of our international readers may know personally.  Its grief is savage.  But the heartache is fully understood by God whose Son’s death was so dreadful.  The sense of abandonment, which Jesus expressed, used the first words of Psalm 22:1-2, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?  Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish?  My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, but I find no rest.”

Compassion is at the heart of the gospel and is a key to Christian living (Colossians 3:12).  The Early Christians shared their possessions, as in a typical Eastern extended family, and provided money to help the poor (Acts 2:44; Galatians 2:10).  The local churches needed to choose how to apportion their resources (Acts 6:1-4), discerning who were the neediest and having no other means of support (1 Timothy 5:3-5).  Widows over the age of 60, with no family at all, might be cared for long-term using the church funds (1 Timothy 5:9-10).  Others were welcomed to become part of Christian families at their own expense (1 Timothy 5:16).  However, Paul advised the church against providing for the young widow long-term using the church’s ‘pastoral care money’.    

Unless God gives specific guidance, a young widow should expect to marry again and raise a family.  That was God’s provision for young widows in Israel (Deuteronomy 25:5-10), which was also seen in the story of Ruth (Ruth 1:8-9, Ruth 4:2-10).  Finding a suitable believing husband may have been more difficult for Gentile believers and for Jewish Christians who did not have the support of their families.  But the option of becoming idle busybodies while supported by others is not a gospel lifestyle – however painful their grief might be.  Paul described those who live for pleasure as dead while they live (1 Timothy 5:6).  The worst of all options would be to become an unaccountable travelling gossip interfering in other people’s lives and delighting in the weakness of others.  Such people become easy prey for Satan, who manipulates a right desire to influence people for good, into a destructive force which separates people and ruins churches.
 
Pastoral care involves difficult decisions.  One thing is certain: the Lord is not pleased when church leaders allow people to do whatever they want.  If that happened, there would be no gospel focus and the church could become a religious club responding to whoever is most manipulative (2 Timothy 3:2-7).  So do pray for your spiritual leaders that God will give them the strength to resist easy solutions where Satan may be at work, while persisting in the hard work of teaching the truth and urging the people to obey God’s Word – for His glory’s sake and not theirs.