The Sweeper

“Test me and see, says the Lord, if I will not open the windows of heaven and pour out a blessing for you.” — from Malachi 3

In 1897 a dangerous sickness called the plague came to Poona, and Ramabai was told to take her famine girls away from the city. So she took them to a farm in the country, at a place called Kedgaon. At first they lived in sheds with thorn bushes around them, under a very hot sun.

But Ramabai gave the place a beautiful name: Mukti. It means “salvation,” or “being set free.” As a girl she had been told that women could never be set free. Now hundreds of girls would find freedom in Jesus there. One day that year, seventeen bullock carts full of girls went down to a river, singing all the way, and many of them were baptised.

Ramabai had read about George Müller, who looked after thousands of orphans in England by trusting God for everything. She wished someone would do that in India. Then she felt God ask her, “Why don’t you begin to do this yourself?” So she did. Mukti had no bank account and no big savings. She told people what God was doing, prayed, and trusted him. “The Lord is our inexhaustible treasure,” she said. That means a treasure that never runs out.

Mukti grew and grew. By 1901 about two thousand women and girls lived there. A visitor wrote that five years before, it had been an open field! The girls learned to read, to farm, to weave cloth and even to print books.

Ramabai had been honoured as a learned lady. But she called herself a sweeper, which in India was one of the lowliest jobs. “I sweep into this compound as many as I can get,” she said. She gathered up the girls no one else wanted, and gave them a home.

Ramabai trusted God for every meal, and God took care of them all. You can trust God with your needs too. And you can be a “sweeper” by welcoming people that others leave out.

Dear God, thank you that you take care of me every day. Help me to trust you, and to welcome people who need a friend. Amen.