🌿BREATHE TRUTH🌿
Soon afterward, Jesus went with His disciples to the village of Nain, and a large crowd followed Him. A funeral procession was coming out as He approached the village gate. The young man who had died was a widow’s only son, and a large crowd from the villa was with her. When the Lord saw her, His heart overflowed with compassion. “Don’t cry,” He said. —Luke 7:11-13
🌿LIVE THE REAL TRUTH🌿
From childhood to adulthood, we spend our whole lives looking for affirmation and confirmation that we are loved and beloved, to be hold and beholden, to have worth and be noteworthy to others. From birth to the grave, we want our lives to matter to someone else and that they value us and think us valuable enough to pursue. At the very worst hour of her life, Jesus perceives the widow and He pursues her. He sees her not as an outsider looking in curiously. But when He sees her, He steps inside her soul, stokes alive the dead embers, and sets ablaze a fire to bring this widow back to life again.
Her husband dies, and then her son dies. But a third death occurs in this family. Sometimes in cases of trauma, tragedy, or tribulation, an unexpected fall occurs—the spiritual death of the survivor. Not a physical demise, but an emotional and psychological death of the spirit.
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The lighting of redemption.
In the book of Ruth, we find another widow, Naomi, whose loved ones have passed away, in this case, a husband and two sons. When Naomi returns from Moab to Bethlehem, she is not the same person anymore.
“Don’t call me Naomi,” she responded. “Instead, call me Mara, for the Almighty has made life very bitter for me. I went away full, but the Lord has brought me home empty.” —Ruth 1:20-21
Ruth concludes God has turned against her, sweetness burning into bitterness. Losses in life lead us to believe that our life, once full, is now empty. Yet in God’s providence, as our train pulls into God’s station, He takes what is shattered and glues it together, what is scattered and gathers it together, and what is splattered and grasps it together.
At our deepest point of pain, God goes deeper into the premature grave we construct for ourselves and calls us out into His higher light. Our train arrives to a station that shines so brightly there’s no room for darkness to disembark. At God’s station, these women experience the lighting of His Redemption, His Son Jesus, illuminating new life into the widow’s son and bestowing a new family to fill Naomi’s empty nest.
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The living of redemption.
In both of the widows’ lives, we see the obvious: the resurrection of what they lose, a child for one woman and a family for the other. But what is not so obvious is this: God does not resurrect pieces and parcels of our lives without resurrecting the entirety of the person. It is to this end that when our train has a Jesus interaction at God’s station, Jesus resurrects the whole individual. The widow of Luke 7: Jesus breathes oxygen into her soul as well as the life of her deceased son. Naomi: her new family becomes a part of the genealogy of Christ the Messiah. The living of His redemption steers these two women on a course towards eternity that tears apart the fabric of darkness the enemy has shrouded over their suffering.
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The liberation of redemption.
To the world, loss means ending. To God, it’s a temporary stop of a funeral process that leads to new beginnings. The widow’s weeping moves Jesus. Naomi’s sorrow over the emptiness of her heart moves Jesus. The fragility and fraility of our humanity moves Jesus. And when Jesus is moved, our train will take us places we could never imagine, where His redemption liberates us from our self-made grave.
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©️2019 Jordan Su