I Timothy 5:11-16
But refuse to enroll younger widows, for when their passions draw them away from Christ, they desire to marry and so incur condemnation for having abandoned their former faith. (vv. 11-12) I can’t speak directly to this topic, but Carol and I do have some connection to this sort of outcome. We spent many years as “missionary visitors” to Mark Bruner and his church in the Czech Republic. We staffed his week-long English Camp five years running, from 2011 to 2015, then again in 2017 and 2019. It was wonderful to build deep connections year-after-year with some of these kids, typically aged 6 to 16. Our disappointment came when many of these girls whom we had grown to love entered high school and found non-Christian boys to be handsome and exciting, with Christian boys too boring. Their “passions drew them away” and they would “abandon their faith”, many failing to return even after many years. So Paul’s words ring true for us, even though the context is somewhat different.
If any believing woman has relatives who are widows, let her care for them. (v. 16) It just dawned on me that life expectancy in the 1st century was a lot lower than today, with women back then outliving men just as they do today. So this “widow” problem (see Acts 6) was probably bigger than we might imagine.
Slava Bohu!