There is a very sweet, kind 89 year old widow who lives in the apartment next to me. She lost her sister last year, and moved to Oklahoma from Phoenix last November to be near her son and daughter-in-law. Having other people visit her and talk with her so blesses her, not to mention the blessing she confers upon those visitors. So, when I read this story about widows in India, I was especially touched.

Most widows in India have their own shed-like room -- about four feet tall and only big enough to fit a woven cot. There they sit all day. Barely talking. Almost motionless. By withdrawing from everyday life and luxuries, these women are living a form of suttee, the now-outlawed practice of burning widows alive, chained to the dead husband's funeral pyre.

Jehovah God has such a different persepctive than that offered by Hinduism:

Psalm 68:5 tells us God is "a defender of the widows..."
Deuteronomy 10:18 "He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow..."
Isaiah 1:17 instructs to "plead the case of the widow."
James 1:27 "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress..."