Women With Focus On Things Above

I am still pretty excited about our most recent Ladies meeting. Let me tell you about it and may you be as encouraged by it as I am.

Friday morning at 8 o’clock we ladies meet for some Bible study and prayer time. While the little kids are going to preschool next door and singing their songs and reciting their rhymes with all they have got in them (it is so cute!), we ladies try to focus on the Bible passage that we heard in church the Sunday before. As a church we are currently learning from the letter to the Colossians. At our last Ladies’ meeting we talked about how we can put into practice what it says in Col. 3: 1-2:

“Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.”

Esther and I asked the ladies how we can practically focus on things above and not on earthly things in the midst of the grind of our daily lives.

Mesari, one of my good friends here (pictured above), told us how she does it, “When I look around me and I see everything that God has made, then I think of him who made it all for us to live in. And when I work in my garden then I thank him for the strength he gives me to work. And when I harvest the foods in my garden I know that it was not I who made things grow, but it was my God who grows the food for us, and I thank him for it!”

Later on we talked about our older kids, of whom some live in faraway towns with relatives and go to school there. The contact with them is rare and many women are worried about them.

Yukite (left picture) also encouraged the ladies. While her 1 year old twins were fighting to nurse on both sides; she told us that she, too, worries about her older two kids who live in town. But she explained that she knows that she can entrust them to God who watches over them and cares for them. She appealed to the women, saying that we need to pray for each other and for each other’s kids so that we will not lose our focus on God who cares and provides.

Also Kwayep (right picture), who is alone with several young kids for months at a time because her oldest kids and her husband are living in town to go to school, shared openly with us how overwhelming life gets for her many days because she has so much work to do. She often feels very alone and incapable to care for every need of her family. But she also shared what she does to get her focus back on the Lord. She said that when she feels overwhelmed she grabs her Bible and reads it and finds new courage and strength to keep on going. By reading her Bible, she experiences peace and does not feel alone anymore.

I am very proud of those ladies! What a great example they are to me! I am so thankful that they are learning to walk with their Lord whether things are easy or hard. For when we look to Him all other things that seem so important at the time become so small because we see how big and great our life is with HIM!