daily java: back from the dead

Daily Java:

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.” Then he went up and touched the bier they were carrying him on, and the bearers stood still. 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.” This news about Jesus spread throughout Judea and the surrounding country. (Luke 7:11-35)

The young man seemed like he could never make it over into death. There had been the funeral and all of the accompanying things that went with the funeral, yet he could never make it over.

Then he heard a voice coming from all over and nowhere at the same time: Young man, I say to you, get up! And – BAM! – his eyes were open and he was looking around. There was this man that everybody seemed to be looking at, along with him, of course. The townspeople were kind of looking at both of them in a mixture of shock, horror, amazement – there were several things, several looks they had in their eyes.

He realized that he was on a moving platform that some people were carrying, like he was sick or – or dead or something.

Wait. He was dead. He remembered dying. He fell off the scaffolding and hit his head on the rocks and died.

No, how could he have died? He was sitting up, wasn’t he? But his mother was looking at him with a look he had never seen the like of: shock, amazement, some – no, a lot of relief. He had died, hadn’t he?

He started talking and it soon became clear that it was going to be hard for him to stop talking. “Where am I? What am I doing here? Why am I on this big bench thing? Who are you? Tell me something, somebody.”

But it was almost as if it was too much to even hardly look at him, much less talk to him. The people around him – were all in black, so it must be a funeral. “Tell me something,” he screamed. “What is happening?”

The man looked at him and said, “It’s okay. Here is your mother.” And he handed the young man over to his mother. His mother grabbed him and hugged harder than he had felt her hug him ever. “Oh, Ezra, oh, Ezra” she said over and over again.

Then, to top it all off, everybody started hollering. They were praising God and in general making a lot of noise. This was not the funeral noise he had usually heard growing up. This was different. This was praise from a group of people who obviously had seen a miracle.

And the miracle was – him. Him. He had been dead and now he wasn’t anymore.

This man (and he found out real quick) was named Jesus. He had heard of him. He went around doing amazing things. Well, for sure, this was an amazing thing. If he raised him from the dead, that was an amazing thing, and that is the truth.

But you know, everybody had another feature obvious on their faces. Fear. Just plain fear. They had seen someone reach over and pull someone else over the edge of death back into life.

And you have to admit that doing something like that is scary. It isn’t something you can look at and just pass off as interesting or entertaining. It mean that this man, this Jesus, had power over life and death.

He wanted to know more. He could take care of his mother and still find out about Jesus. He figured one of the reasons Jesus brought him back from the dead was to take care of his widowed mother. And he would. But he also wanted to find out more about this seemingly ordinary-looking fountain of life.

When Jesus left town, Ezra was with him, as was his mother, Miriam. That young man wanted to know something good. And he would find out if he could.