Dahlia
April 24, 2006
Dear Friends
The warm Jamaican sun blasted into my room in the morning awakening me as it had done each of the previous days. At a little after 6 AM, I wandered down to the lobby of the hotel to read my Bible and wait for my companions to awaken. This day was different than the rest because this time the lobby was not deserted as in previous days but occupied by a young Jamaican woman reading her Bible.
Dahlia was coming to the hotel to get experience in housekeeping. She was getting up at 4AM, traveling several hours to the hotel and working for free. Because she needed to get a ride, she was arriving well before her job started and redeemed the time by reading her small, worn copy of the New Testament.
Before long, Dahlia and I were in a deep conversation about the Scriptures. For any who have visited the West Indies, getting involved in a deep Biblical conversation is not an unusual event. The people of Jamaica, relative to the rest of the world, know their Bibles. More interestingly perhaps is that when discussing spiritual things, they instinctively use what the Bible says as proof of what they believe.
Dahlia never knew her father and her mother died at the age of four. She and her siblings lived with neighbors until she reached the age of seven when she was put out on the street. She survived by selling steel wool and lived in tenement housing. In utter despair at age 15, she considered suicide by driving an ice pick into her chest. Instead, she chose to search for God.
Her search for God had recently brought her to the Seventh Day Adventist Church which is predominant on the island. However, she disagreed with their most fundamental of doctrines – the keeping of the Sabbath. She also found that in other areas of general Bible scholarship, their ability to give her answers to her many questions was lacking. Even worse, they castigated her for even asking the questions in the first place.
We spent several hours discussing the Scriptures until she had to go to work and agreed to get together later. We ended up having several conversations in the following days coming to agreement on nearly all essential Bible teachings and answering most of her questions. She came out to the evening Bible studies we were having and made a connection with the local brethren and sisters. It seems that God has answered her prayer offered on that desperate day nearly seventeen years ago.
There are several short exhortations which come to mind in this story. First, for those who are searching for God or in despair, don’t give up. God is faithful and loving. “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened.†Second, be ready to give an answer for your faith at all times. You never know when God will provide an opportunity for you to witness to the great things He has done. That light at the end of the tunnel for those in despair may be YOU. Finally, remember those in affliction. Dahlia’s story is not unique. As an unemployed widow with two children, her story is far from over. “Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.â€
Have a great week!
P.S. Many requests have been made to print the TFTW in book form. Since this has been a community effort, I would like to make this book a community effort as well. If there is any particular TFTW that has touched you or that you would like to write a preface for, please contact Kyle Tucker. We will include some of these comments in the book, Lord willing.
