MERCY TRIUMPHS OVER DEATH

Lk.7:12-15 – Now as He approached the gate of the city, a dead man was being carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow; and a sizable crowd from the city was with her. When the Lord saw her, He felt compassion for her and said to her, “Do not go on weeping.” And He came up and touched the coffin; and the bearers came to a halt. And He said, “Young man, I say to you, arise!” And the dead man sat up and began to speak. And Jesus gave him back to his mother.

This has to be one of my top favorite stories in the gospels. Jesus is visiting a remote, insignificant village called Nain and performs one of His greatest miracles there. As the story goes there was a woman there who had lost her husband, possibly through a tragic accident or sickness. Now this poor widow had lost her only son. Talk about a state of hopelessness, this woman had lost everything and her future was one of utter despair. That all changed when Jesus came to Nain, one word from Jesus and life triumphed over death. Jesus saw the misery and despair in this mother’s life and mercy overtook Him, moved with compassion He touched the boy’s casket and told him to get up. In that moment heartbreak turned into shouts of joy, mercy had defeated death, this woman was given back her life. Here is how Andrea Torneilli describes this in his book THE LIFE OF JESUS.

“This is a truly great miracle of Jesus, the resurrection of a young man. And yet, the core of this narrative is not the miracle, but Jesus’s tenderness toward the mother of this young man. Here, mercy takes the name of tremendous compassion toward a woman who had lost her husband and is now accompanying her only son to the cemetery. This deep sorrow of a mother moves Jesus and causes him to perform the miracle of resurrection. . . . Tremendous compassion guides Jesus’s actions—touching the bier he stops the procession, and, moved by profound mercy for this mother, decides to confront death face to face, so to speak. And he will confront it definitively, face to face, on the cross.”

Have you ever been drowning in total despair? Maybe you are in a spot like that right now. What grabs me in this story is the compassion Jesus had on this brokenhearted mother. That’s the way Jesus is, He identifies with the pain and suffering all of us face. Today I believe Jesus is passing your way. He likes out of the way places and supposedly unimportant people, that’s just the way He is. I think today He may just be coming to visit you at your house.