You're listening to the Jeff Kaven Show episode 221, our widows. It's not just a dream.

Hey, I'm Jeff Kaven's. How do you simplify your life? How do you study the Bible?

All the way from motorcycle trips to raising kids, we're going to talk about the faith and life in general.

It's the Jeff Kaven Show.

Of all the funerals that I have attended over the years, which I have attended quite a few funerals.

And for 12 years, I was a Protestant pastor and I was overseeing the funeral.

And I had family standing around and I've got to tell you that the hardest funerals to officiate, the hardest funerals to attend are the funerals of men who suddenly are gone.

And their wife has left with children. No doubt you have heard stories like this. No doubt you have friends or colleagues where this has happened and you attended the funeral.

And there's not a dry eye in the place because there's something so deep that has taken place that it affects the entire congregation.

It affects the entire body that is assembled there to take part in the funeral.

You know, in the last few years, there's been several of them like that for me.

And every time I am part of a funeral where there is a surviving widow, I am reminded of what the Bible says about my responsibility to take care of the widow and to be attentive to not only their spiritual needs, but their physical needs as well.

I'd like to talk to you today about our widows. Now, the title of this podcast did not catch you and say, well, that's not something that I need.

It is something that you need. It's something that we all need because we are going to have people in our immediate families that are going to experience this.

And we're not spectators. We are not people who just observe, but we have an opportunity to be engaged and to love and to support the widows in the church.

You know, widows are not just spouses. A widow is, it can be a mother. A widow is a grandmother. A widow is a daughter, a sister, an aunt, a friend, a colleague.

And so when we talk about widows, we're talking about people who are in relationship to so many other people. And the loss that they experience is deep. It's lonely. And it's indescribably empty. And you and I have something to offer them that is our responsibility in the body of Christ.

I remember a song a few years ago. I think it was an award ceremony, one of these big television awards ceremonies, maybe it was the country western award ceremony. And carry underwood sang a song that just brought me to tears. And I know I wasn't alone when I watched it. The song was called just a dream.

And let me share these words with you. And then I want to get into the scriptural aspect of what our responsibility is to the widow and a word of encouragement to widows.

Just a dream, carry underwood performed this amazing song as she sang. It was two weeks after the day she turned 18, all dressed in white, go into the church that night. She had his box of letters in the passenger seat, six pence in her shoe, something borrowed, something blue.

And when the church doors opened up wide, she put her veil down, trying to hide the tears. Oh, she just couldn't believe it. She heard the trumpets from the military band and the flowers fell out of her hands. Baby, why do you leave me? Why do you have to go? I was counting on forever. Now I'll never know. I can't even breathe.

It's like I'm looking from a distance standing in the backyard. Everybody's saying he's not coming home now. This can't be happening to me. This is just a dream.

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