Message Magazine’s Online Devotional for Monday, May 4, 2015
Based Upon Luke 11:11-17
Weep not! Can you imagine hearing those two, seemingly insignificant words from the mouth of Christ? If someone says, “Don’t cry” after you break a favorite vase, stub your toe on a chair leg, or accidentally scrape the paint of your new car, then OK. But for a widowed mother to hear that when her only son is dead, that must have been difficult.
There are times in our lives when it seems things cannot get any worse. You have had those experiences. You lose your job two weeks before you close on your dream house, which you have waited 20 years to buy. You find out your cousin has stage-four metastatic breast cancer. You find out that your precious daughter has been keeping a secret: she’s pregnant and is not sure which one of the four men she has been sexually active with over the past few months is the father. You realize that your husband has been seeing another woman. Oh, and that other woman is your best friend from the graduating class of 1976. Many are the trials we endure while living on this renegade planet. But scarcely can it be described when the trial is the death of your only beloved son!
Can you imagine the scene? You are a widow whose only son is about to be buried. Jesus comes by and tells you not to cry. How do you feel in that moment? Do you wish He would go away and allow you to mourn? Do you recognize that it’s Christ who’s speaking and immediately have hopes of a miracle that will change your life forever? Fortunately, this woman did not need too much time to think or feel. The Master immediately spoke to the mind of a dead boy whom He had created, and the same effulgent power emanated through His command that spoke the worlds into existence, and the boy came to life again. The One who would not many years later give His life for us on a cruel cross, commanded that this boy receive his life and that joy would return to a grieving mother.
Though trials must certainly come, take courage that the Lord always has a word to speak into your life. His word is power.
His word is strength. His word is love. His word is holiness. His word is rest. Embrace His word and expect the miracle of grace to unfold in your life