Luke built a fire of beachwood and as the sun came up we had breakfast together—some of them singing, everyone hungry, the fish tasting marvelous.
“Mark broke his oar,” Luke said and laughed. He was drying by the fire, his clothes steaming. He explained that they had been blown first one way and then another.
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Nain
Tevet 18
This has been a beautiful week because I raised a man from the dead and made a blind man see.
At Nain, a small village, my disciples and I met a burial procession headed for tombs cut in the side of a nearby hill. A young man lay on a flower-covered bier. I learned his name from a man in the procession: it was David. He and his mother had been my friends for years. I recognized Athalia walking behind the bier, weeping. Aaron, her husband, had died recently.
It was a warm, still afternoon. The warbling of a bulbul seemed out of place as the procession passed. As the bier scraped against a rock, as the bearers stopped, I approached one of them and asked them to wait.
“David...David...this is Jesus...arise...”
The disciples, astonished, bunched around the bier. I touched David, spoke loudly, shook him.