Luke 7:12 As he approached the town gate, a dead person was being carried out — the only son of his mother, and she was a widow.
Destitute! We don’t hear this word spoken too often here in this country these days. We have life insurance, welfare, Medicare and Medicaid, soup kitchens, homeless shelters, GoFundMe and endless charities. Most people have something more than simply the clothes on their backs. Those who are destitute only have that.
My wife has worked at various charities in the past, often doing the screenings to determine if people needed help. What would frustrate her would be people driving up in a $50,000 SUV with a fancy cell phone, needing food assistance. She wanted to tell them to turn the SUV back in and get a small vehicle to save $500 a month. That would pay for their food. But she resisted.
We don’t know the whole story of the woman in this text. We know she is a widow, her husband having died at some point in the past. This would have been a very difficult spot to be in during this time in history. There were no support networks, no charities, no government programs to help. She would have had to scape by in a male dominated world, without the status to be able to earn a decent living.
They did have a son who would have been put into service as soon as he was able to help earn a living in support of his family. That is what they did. The males in the society back then were assigned the task of supplying for the needs of the family.
Again, we don’t know the age of the boy at this moment in our story. What we do know is that he has died. All hope of this widow finding support is evaporating before her eyes. And beside the practical financial help being taken from her, she is grieving over the loss of her only son.
Put yourself in her shoes. She has mourned the loss of her husband. She has adapted to being a single parent and wage earner as the unskilled, under appreciated woman. She has raised her son, and now he has died. Grief upon grief.
She can’t even think about the future at this point, she is so overwhelmed with grief, and yet she must. The bills are still due at the end of the month. And she still doesn’t have an income sufficient to meet the needs. She is destitute.
But Jesus…. Jesus enters and raises the boy back to life and gives him back to her. You can hear the tears of joy, the wails of jubilation, the endless hugs and touches to the face. The crowd joins in and raises the volume. They have never seen anything like this, or even heard of such an event. They have witnessed something unprecedented.
And their conclusion about the identity of Jesus is simple. They believe Him to be a great prophet, someone who will help God’s people. And this is without understanding the full message that Jesus preached, both with His life and actions and with His words.
And we too must preach with our lives, actions and words. Can you imagine this woman keeping quiet about what happened? I can’t! I am sure for the rest of her life she told about the day her son was raised from the dead by the man named Jesus from Nazareth. I can imagine her saying after Jesus Himself was raised from the dead, that it didn’t surprise her one bit. He raised her son.
What is the story you tell of the greatness of the LORD? We all have one, and if we don’t we had better get close enough to the LORD to get one.
The Arnold Journey 