"For thy Maker is thy husband; the Lord of hosts is His name and thy Redeemer
the Holy One of Israel; The God of the whole earth He shall be called. For the
Lord hath called thee as a woman forsaken and grieved in spirit, and a wife
of youth, when thou was refused, saith thy God. For a small moment have
I forsaken thee; but with great mercies will I gather thee. In a little wrath
I hid My face from thee for a moment; but with everlasting kindness
will I have mercy on thee, saith the Lord thy Redeemer."
(Isaiah 54:5-8)
" I was overjoyed to find some of your children walking in truth, just as
the Father has commanded us. And now I urge you, dear lady, not as a new
commandment to you, but one we have had from the beginning-that we love
one another. And this is love, that we walk according to His commandments. This is
the very commandment you have heard from the beginning, that you must walk in love."
(2 John 4-6)
Who was this "chosen lady" who merited a letter from the apostle John?
Where was she from? What was her role in the ministry?
How did she come to faith in Christ?
How often we wish the Bible offered more details about individuals and events,
and in this letter we are left to wonder about an unnamed, unidentified woman
and her "chosen sister". Scholars have speculated that these two women were leaders
of house churches and that the children mentioned were their spiritual children. As such,
they may have had an important role in the foundational growth of the early church.
In one sense, it is their lack of identity that allows them to represent the countless
"chosen ladies" from around the world who have faithfully served the Lord through
the centuries-women whose names have been lost in the annals of history.
I often wonder where I would be today were it not for two "chosen ladies".
Miss Salthammer and Miss Cowan moved to my rural community in
northern Wisconsin several years before I was born, and out of their
sacrificial church-planting ministry came the Green Grove Alliance Church.
When I was growing up in that little country church, the two women had long
since packed their bags and moved on to plant other churches. I know of them
through prayer requests offered on their behalf and through their occasional
return visits to teach vacation Bible school.
As kids, we sometimes laughed at the way they dressed, and we told jokes
about how they were paid with a load of potatoes or turnips instead of money.
I later learned that when Miss Cowan died she was buried in a pauper's grave.
They were ordinary women whose span of years has ended and whose names
will soon be forgotten. But their ministry lives on through the generations
of their spiritual children. They were chosen ladies.
"Chosen Ladies"
A devotional by
Ruth Anne Tucker
(1945-
American historian, author,
and educator
(2010)
Zemer Levav
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