It is hot in India, hot and humid. The blazing sun beats down on the steaming land at midday, but in the early morning hours there is still a little of the night's coolness left. In the morning light the Ganges River flows softly, its waters reflecting the red and gold of hundreds of minarets and towers on the temples and shrines of the great city, for this is Varanasi, the holiest city in India. It is a peaceful, picturesque scene.
Beautiful, at least from a distance. A closer look reveals that the river is serving as an enormous sewer for the city and for the towns and villages above it. All sorts of trash float by, along with an occasional dead goat or monkey, a half-burned body from the ghats above or even a not-at-all-burned body of some beggar that was simply thrown into the river.
Now there is beginning to be a stir and movement along the banks of the river, and women are beginning to come down to the water walking alone or in groups. Surely these women will not touch that polluted water! But yes, one by one they go down to the river and unhesitatingly immerse themselves in it.
Who are they, and why do they do this?
They are widows, Hindu widows, and they are seeking to wash away their sin of widowhood.
All other Hindus are permitted to wash away their sins with one dip in the river, but a widow must do it daily every—single day—for as long as she lives.
When she is too old and feeble to go to the river friends will still bring her a copper urn of the sacred water every day.
About 10,000 widows live in Varanasi. Most are living in abject poverty, struggling to earn just enough to stay alive, but fervently and devoutly washing to make themselves clean.
Can water, no matter how clean and pure, applied to the outside of the skin make the heart inside clean?
No; the purest water, the most frequent bathing, cannot wash away one sin. David, who wrote most of the Psalms, understood this when he prayed to the God he had sinned against, "Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.... Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow." Psa. 51:2, 72Wash me throughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. (Psalm 51:2)
7Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. (Psalm 51:7).
A lifetime of washing in the Ganges can never cleanse the heart; the poor widows of Varanasi are throwing their lives away as surely as if they had followed the old Hindu custom of burning to death on their husband's funeral pyre. It is a hard, sad life they are doomed to, and all for nothing—for nothing.
If only the widows could know that!