June 29

A Woman’s Love

Sing, O barren woman, you who never bore a child; burst into song, shout for joy, you who were never in labor; because more are the children of the desolate woman than of her who has a husband,” says the Lord.

Enlarge the place of your tent, stretch your tent curtains wide, do not hold back; lengthen your cords, strengthen your stakes. For you will spread out to the right and to the left; your descendants will dispossess nations and settle in their desolate cities.

Isaiah 54:1-3

This passage in Isaiah has been a source of comfort to women, married and single, who have not experienced the joy of having children. Though written for the nation of Israel and not expressly for a woman, the verses nevertheless offer consolation to barren women who can joyfully lengthen their tent cords and strengthen their stakes and serve the Lord faithfully.

Kathryn Kuhlman was a well-known healing evangelist who captured the hearts of millions of followers from the 1940s to the 1970s. She was a woman of deep emotion. Her healing ministry was not one that focused on herself but on others as she compassionately bent over them, seeking to alleviate their pain. It was this ministry that allowed her “to spread out to the right and to the left” and to have “descendants” in all nations.

Her biographer, Jamie Buckingham, poignantly describes the love that was evident in her ministry: “I saw her, on dozens of occasions, take a child that was lame, maybe paralyzed from birth, and hug that child to her breast with the love of a mother. I am convinced she would have, at any moment required of her, given her life in exchange for that child’s healing. She would hug bleary-eyed alcoholics and mix her tears with theirs. And the prostitutes who came to her meetings, with tears smearing their mascara, knew that if they could but touch her they would have touched the love of God. And those little old women, hobbling along on canes and crutches, some of whom couldn’t even speak the English language but were drawn by the universal language of love.”

The love she demonstrated was God’s love, but it was also a woman’s love. “No man could have ever loved like that,” writes Buckingham. “It took a woman, bereft of the love of a man, her womb barren, to love as she loved. Out of her emptiness—she gave. To be replenished by the only lover she was allowed to have—the Holy Spirit.” ²⁹