Here is the sixth entry from my upcoming booklet, “Our Darkness, His Light”.

THE WIDOW

Luke 23:27-30

With a harsh, cruel motion of her hand, Ruth wiped the white paste across her face.  She looked in the glass that mirrored her features.  She adjusted the white paint on her face so that no skin showed.  Ruth’s face looked lifeless.  With another sudden movement, she pasted black across her lips.  Her hands snaked into the pot before her and brought out ashes that she sprinkled in her hair.  Ruth whirled in the darkness of her room and grabbed a black cloak from the wooden peg by the door.  She settled it around her shoulders.  Next, came a black shawl draped over her head.  Ruth glanced in the glass once more and approved of the harsh, ghostly figure that stood before her.  It looked dead.

“I’ll show them.  They think that they are the best.  They think that they can push me out because I’m a lonely widow.  I can do as well as the rest of them.  Just wait until they hear me, the old biddies.”

Ruth whirled in the shadows of her room and her white hand snaked out to open the doorway.  Bright sunlight gushed in from the outside and she squinted in the light.  She cast the black shawl over her face and stepped out into the dusty, hot streets of Jerusalem.

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