CGM: Cross Cultural Minis
Lela works hard as a housecleaner. She arrives early so that she can make breakfast for the family who she works for. Lela isn’t a maid but the children of the family have started to treat her as such.
As the husband, wife, and two children sit down to eat breakfast, Lela goes from room to room of the apartment picking up socks and toys as she assesses what needs to be done today. She starts a load of laundry and heads back to the kitchen to refill tea glasses. Lela makes sure that the children eat their food and tries to give them each one more piece of cheese. She then helps the children put on their jackets and shoes, and hands them their backpacks as they leave to take the bus to school. The husband and wife are quickly out the door, too, each wearing a suit that Lela ironed the day before. Lela closes the front door and heads back to the bathroom to put on her work clothes. The rest of the day she will be cooking dinner, vacuuming, scrubbing floors, washing windows, dusting, folding laundry, ironing, and whatever else the woman of the house has given her to do that day.
Lela has been cleaning houses for twenty years and she is good at it. She has had to be good because she needs to earn good money. Lela’s husband works, but the money that he earns never seems to make it home. Lela has always worked hard, desiring for her children to have a better life than her, and she feels she has succeeded. One graduated from college and is now working. The other is in college and is doing well. Thankfully her kids have seen the value of their mother’s hard work and they work hard themselves.
Difficulty Lela has faced throughout life has made her strong and hard working. Her perseverance and steadfastness reflects the image of God in her. Please pray that the determination to work hard would not keep Lela from some day seeing and coming to faith in Christ who has done all the work for her to be reconciled to God. Please pray for the injustices that Lela endures to be redeemed. Pray for women like Lela in Turkey and all throughout the world.
