The Divine Disposition: The Widow of Nain

Many of my friends and I are hurting today over several difficult losses we are experiencing. I pray that this chapter from Jesus with the People, written by my sister, Emily Presley Bringardner, will be an encouragement as we remind ourselves of our Lord's incredible compassion.

  

When the Lord saw her, his heart went out to her and he said, “Don’t cry.” Luke 7:13 

            

I imagine the funeral procession as they approach the city gate to bury the dead man. In that coffin are the dashed hopes of a mother.

            

We don’t know how long it had been since she walked this same route to bury her husband. We do know she was a widow, and this was her only son; a mother who had lost her husband now had lost her son. All the “what ifs” or “might have beens” were now in vain, for he was gone.

            

A mother was alone and crying.

I heard that same crying the night my brother died. It was a Friday night after a high school football game. I remember getting the phone call that there had been a car accident. I was sipping hot chocolate and talking with my mom when we both heard my Dad ask someone on the phone, “Both occupants of the Volkswagen?” Dad hung up the phone and very quietly said, “Ron and Elaine are dead.”

           

And then I heard my mother cry.

            

And I couldn’t say, “Don’t cry.” I remember holding her tightly and quoting every Bible verse I could remember. My heart ached for her, and I longed for her to have no reason to cry, but I knew she had reason…and I had no power to remove the reason.

            

I was fifteen and had been to many funerals before. But this one was different. This was my brother—the one who gave me twelve valentines when I wasn’t yet in school and didn’t get valentines from classmates like my older sister did. The one who used to tell me I was special. The one who’d given me his guitar and taught me to enjoy music and theater. And most of all, the prize of my mother’s heart¾her firstborn. The one she was both Mom and Dad to during the World War II years. The one she struggled with and prayed for during his difficult teen years. Then, there he was--a senior in college, newly married and so full of life and promise. His life had ended, and the promises could not be kept.

            

This funeral procession was different because I was personally involved. I was vulnerable, but not by choice.

The Choice of Love

Here is where I stand in awe of Jesus. He chose to be vulnerable to everyone’s pain. His heart ached for a woman whom he had never met. It was a simultaneous thing for him, “when he saw...his heart went out to her” with no reserve. By nature, Jesus was involved, compelled. He saw a woman he had never seen before, and immediately he felt her pain. And he did not just go about his own business.

 I am reminded of the contrasting view of W. H. Auden, the poet:

           

            About suffering they were never wrong, the Old Masters; How well they understood it’s human disposition:        How it takes place while someone else is eating, or opening a window, or just walking dully along.

Yes, this describes the “human disposition.” One suffers while another does a mundane task, unaware of the suffering of the other. I am so thankful for the contrast of the “Divine disposition.” 

I treasure the comfort of knowing that Jesus cared when my mother cried and that Jesus is never oblivious to my pain. 

While he felt the joy of someone else’s baby’s birth, at the same exact time, he felt my pain of miscarrying our first baby at four months. 

While he felt the happiness of someone else’s wedding vow, at the same moment he felt my sadness as I held my mother’s hand in the intensive care unit of the hospital and promised with my sister to “take care of Dad.” 

While Jesus’ heart rejoiced at someone’s engagement celebration, his heart went out to my family as we made my father’s funeral arrangements. Realizing this gives me a glimpse into the unfathomable depth of the heart of Jesus. This is God’s omnipresence. Jesus’ compassion knows no bounds; he has an unlimited capacity for caring, as Paul describes in Ephesians 3:19: “how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ.”            

Jesus did what only he could do to ease her pain. He said, “Don’t cry.” What precious words to hear from the very lips of Jesus! How she must have let those words echo in her mind until her dying day, and how she must have recounted them over and over to her son when she got him back. 

She got him back! Amazing! A gift from the very heart of God. He did not just tell her “Don’t cry.” By his action, he gave her a reason to rejoice, just as he would one day give his own mother--and all of us--a reason to rejoice through his own death and resurrection.

There was no burial outside the city gates in Nain that day—only a Mother rejoicing in hope.

§

            The heart of Jesus is touched as he sees and feels our pain. Just as this woman felt the love and hope brought to her life that day, so can we. Though Jesus will not always remove the source of our pain, he will always support us and love us as we go through it. And he will remind us of the home he has prepared for us where there will be no death, no tears and no pain.