What would you think if you were crying and someone said to you, “don’t cry?”
Luke 7:11-13
Soon afterward, Jesus went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd went along with him. As he approached the town gate, a dead person was being carried out—the only son of his mother, and she was a widow. And a large crowd from the town was with her. When the Lord saw her, his heart went out to her and he said, “Don’t cry.””
In this story of Jesus meeting up with a funeral procession, Jesus said to the mother, “don’t cry.”
It is so easy to simply focus on just those two words, but, there is more revealed in the story to give us understanding of what Jesus was thinking when he said those words.
Verse 13 says, “When the Lord saw her, his heart went out to her and he said, “Don’t cry.””
Jesus was all God, all man. He could laugh, and cry. He could celebrate, and mourn (after all this was not the only person who Jesus raised from the dead. When he heard of Lazarus’ death, he wept, then raised a four-days dead man!). Jesus humanly understood the sorrow that the young man’s mother was suffering, and her suffering tugged at his human heart … as well as at his divine being. Maybe he not only saw, but also felt the heartache that the mother was feeling (Romans 12:15 “rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep.”).
As ‘his heart went out to her,’ Jesus saw the heartbreak, the agony, the loss, and the hopelessness in the countenance of the widowed mother of a dead young man. Her son that was to be her only hope for a future in that society.
Jesus also knew that he, a son, was the only hope of a future for us. Perhaps the mourning that Jesus saw in that woman was a foreshadowing of what Jesus, the Son of God, would experience when he would be separated by death, from his Father.
Then he said, “young man, I say to you, get up!” The dead man sat up and began to talk, and Jesus gave him back to his mother. They were all filled with awe and praised God. “A great prophet has appeared among us,” they said. “God has come to help his people.” (v. 14-16)
And, as the people were all in awe that “God has come to help his people,” those same people knew nothing of the sorrow that He would bare in order to help them, in the very near future. But, He knew.
Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life.
Anyone who believes in Me will live, even if he dies.
And those who live and believe in Me will never die.
Do you believe this?”
John 11:25-26
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