I do not know how Maria's story will end. I will not pretend to know. But when I read the news this week, I could not help thinking of a woman our Lord once described, a widow with no money, no standing, and no friends in high places, who had nothing on her side but the justice of her cause and the stubbornness of her hope. "And he spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not to faint; Saying, There was in a city a judge, which feared not God, neither regarded man: And there was a widow in that city; and she came unto him, saying, Avenge me of mine adversary." You remember how it ends. The judge relents, not because his heart has softened, but because the widow will not stop coming. And then Jesus draws back the curtain: "And shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them? I tell you that he will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?"
Though he bear long with them. There is honesty in those words that I have come to treasure. Scripture does not promise that justice arrives on our schedule. Maria's family has been coming to the gate for a year now, petition after petition, hearing after hearing, and heaven has watched every step. The parable does not teach that God is like the unjust judge; it teaches that He is utterly unlike him. If even a corrupt man can be moved by persistence, how much more will a righteous Father hear the cries of a child who belongs to Him?
I think, too, of what this case asks of those who sit on the bench, in Pakistan or anywhere else. The psalmist gives every ruler and magistrate their commission: "Defend the poor and fatherless: do justice to the afflicted and needy. Deliver the poor and needy: rid them out of the hand of the wicked." That is not a partisan word. It is not an Eastern word or a Western word. It is the standard by which every court on earth will itself one day be judged. When judges reopen a case like this one, whatever their reasons, they are stepping, perhaps unknowingly, into work that God cares about deeply, and we ought to pray that He guides their deliberations toward truth.
And what of us, so far from Lahore and Islamabad? We are not helpless. We are the widow's companions at the gate. The persecuted church has always asked one thing of us before anything else, and that is that we would not forget them. So I invite you to pray by name this week for Maria, for her mother and father who have refused to give up, for the lawyers who have taken her cause, and for the judges who will hear it. Pray also for the many girls whose names never reach a newspaper, for the reports remind us that Maria's story is not rare.
Men ought always to pray, and not to faint. That is the whole sermon, really. The gate is open again. Let us keep coming to it, day and night, until the Judge of all the earth does right.