Pleasant Places

Her heart is heavy, her movements slow, her face bears evidence of her grief. This road she now treads she has walked a time before. Yet now the sting of her pain seems even more intense. It wasn’t too long ago that she laid to rest the love of her youth, the man who treated her like his queen and built her a home in the midst of green pastures. In a twinkling of the batting of an eye her status had changed from wife to that of widow. Now life has dealt her yet another heavy blow as her only reason for living, her only son, lies lifeless on a stretcher being carried to his burial place.

Right at that moment she longed to bury her head one last time in his dark brown curly hair, to embrace him to smell the woody scent on his masculine skin and hear the laugh of his contagious laugh resonate in her ear. Not even this last request would be given her as touching the dead would make her ceremonially unclean.

It is ironic that she lives in a place called Nain. The meaning of that name, Nain, is Pleasant. How is it possible to live in a place called Pleasant when all you have to show for it is loss, pain and simply more never ending pain?

And now as death made its exit through the city gates, Life made his triumphant entry into her Pleasant place. For the first time in her whole ordeal she feels as if someone can actually see the pain trapped inside her heart. Without a word He motions to the pall bearers to come to a halt. And so without being concerned about becoming ceremonially unclean and being frowned upon by those around, He touches the stretcher. As death gave way to this great exchange, life was restored to the young man again. He sat up on the stretcher and began to speak of what it felt like to have awoken from his deep sleep.

While people questioned and others rejoiced this miraculous work, the widow from a place called Nain wept even more. For her hope has sprung alive and her joy been restored in her Pleasant place. What was meant to be a funeral filled with sorrow turned into a joyous homecoming celebration.

Pleasant places often bear marks of excruciating memories of pain and rejection. Its water colour stains reflects hours of tears and often years of torment. It questions the very notion as to whether the boundary lines spoken about by the Psalmist have fallen in pleasant places. Yet, in the midst of all the uncertainties of life lies this eternal truth, that hope is not merely given, but hope is created, when the Giver of Life makes his graceful entrance into our Pleasant Places.

Rodrique E. George