What the Widows Showed Peter

When Peter came to Joppa, the widows showed him clothes.

Dorcas had made them. Now she lay in an upper room, washed and dead, and the women stood around the man they had sent for, weeping and showing him her work.

Those clothes had taken time to make. Cloth to be got and cut. Seams to be closed by hand. A garment takes some of the hours a person has on this earth, and when it is given away, those hours go with it. Somebody wears it home. The maker has less to point to than she had that morning.

Luke calls Dorcas a disciple. He says she was full of good works and almsdeeds which she did. We meet her through the things she did for people, then almost immediately through what people did for her.

She became sick and died. They washed her.

It is easy to pass over the washing on the way to the miracle. But somebody had to do it. Washing a body asks something of the living. An arm has to be lifted. The head needs supporting. The person being washed cannot help you turn her. You still have to be careful with her, and being careful can hurt, because your hands are doing something they know how to do for someone who can no longer respond.

Whoever washed Dorcas was tending a woman who had clothed other people. Now she needed everything done for her. When they had washed her, they laid her in an upper room.

Peter was in nearby Lydda. There, a man named Eneas, who had kept his bed for eight years, had risen when Peter told him that Jesus Christ made him whole. The disciples in Joppa heard that Peter was there and sent two men to fetch him. Their request was that he would not delay.

There is a whole journey in that request. The men have to leave the house, find Peter, bring him back. Other people remain with the dead woman. The account does not tell us what they expected him to do. It tells us they wanted him there, and soon.

Peter came with them.

Then Peter arose and went with them. When he was come, they brought him into the upper chamber: and all the widows stood by him weeping, and shewing the coats and garments which Dorcas made, while she was with them.

Acts 9:39, KJV

You can picture a woman holding out a coat over her arm, trying to make him look at it. Another showing a seam, or the front of something she is wearing. We are not told how they showed him. We are told that they did, and that they wept while they did it.

Grief will reach for something it can put in another person's hands. A photograph. A letter. Something the dead person made. The object gives you somewhere to begin when someone arrives who did not know what you knew.

These women had garments. Dorcas had been among them, making things they could use. Now the clothes were here and she could no longer speak to the people showing them.

Peter put everyone out.

He knelt and prayed. Then he turned to the body.

But Peter put them all forth, and kneeled down, and prayed; and turning him to the body said, Tabitha, arise. And she opened her eyes: and when she saw Peter, she sat up.

Acts 9:40, KJV

She opened her eyes. She saw Peter. She sat up. Then he gave her his hand and lifted her up.

That offered hand belongs in the story as much as the command does. Peter had just spoken to a dead woman, and now he was helping her rise. He called the saints and widows and presented her alive. The people who had been weeping over her were allowed to see her again.

It became known throughout Joppa, and many believed in the Lord.

I think about the work that goes into another person and can feel, by evening, as if it has disappeared.

Imagine a daughter who has moved her mother into the back bedroom. She helps her up, gets her washed and dressed, makes breakfast, sits while she eats. By afternoon her mother has forgotten the meal. The laundry is back in the basket. The pills were sorted for a week, and now the week is over.

Her brother takes a Saturday when he can. A neighbor brings supper. She needs them. There are mornings when she hears her mother waking and wants ten more minutes before anybody needs her hands.

A day like that can be hard to account for. She has been busy since morning. Tomorrow will ask her to do most of it again.

Her mother ate today. She was clean. Someone helped her stand and stayed while she found her balance. Having to do it again does not undo what happened this morning. Forgetting the meal does not mean she went hungry.

And the daughter needs a life in which somebody notices when she is tired. Calling her work valuable ought to give the rest of us a reason to help with it. She should be able to leave the house knowing her mother will still be cared for.

Dorcas's story has room for the person who provides the care to become the person who needs it. Other hands washed her. Other feet made the journey. The widows gathered. Peter came. When she could do nothing, there were people doing things for her.

We cannot make this account promise that every person we love will sit up before burial. The widows in Joppa received something extraordinary. Their joy does not condemn the people who have prayed and still had to bury someone.

But we can stay with what they received. They had come to Peter with things Dorcas made. He called them back to see Dorcas herself.

The account leaves us there, with her alive among them. Imagine being one of those women, still holding the garment you brought to show him, and having to put it down because now there is someone to hold.

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