Desperate Women

Desperate Women

Women During Famine

Read: 2 Kings 6:24-30

We’ve all been haunted by images on television and in newspapers of people who suffer from starvation. Especially heart wrenching are the pictures of babies and young children with huge eyes and swollen bellies. Sometimes they’re shown lying against their mothers, too weak and lethargic to lift a hand and shoo the flies away from their faces. The eyes of the parents always look empty and hopeless.

The women in today’s passage knew the horrors of starvation. When Samaria suffered severe famine because of a siege, the people became so desperate for food that some resorted to killing and eating their children. One woman persuaded another mother to kill her son so they could eat him, promising that they would eat her son the next day. When the first woman hid her son, the woman who had killed hers appealed to the king. At that moment, all this mother could think of was the broken promise of a second meal. How can we imagine her feelings after the famine ended and the horror of what she had done sank in?

Even if we don’t live in an area affected by famine, people around us are desperate for spiritual food. Everyone longs for answers to life’s problems, and many are searching for something to give meaning to their lives. Many people have rejected God’s Word as a source of truth and look for other ways to feed their souls. When Israel began to ignore God’s Word, God warned that if they didn’t repent, they would soon not hear from him at all. As children of God, we need to point people to God’s Word, where they will find what they’re looking for before they suffer the worst kind of famine.

“The time is surely coming,” says the Sovereign LORD, “when I will send a famine on the land—not a famine of bread or water but of hearing the words of the LORD.”

Amos 8:11