Daily Bible Reading 16th June 2026 // Luke 11-17
11 Soon afterwards he went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a great crowd went with him. 12 As he drew near to the gate of the town, behold, a man who had died was being carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow, and a considerable crowd from the town was with her. 13 And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her and said to her, “Do not weep.” 14 Then he came up and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, “Young man, I say to you, arise.” 15 And the dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother. 16 Fear seized them all, and they glorified God, saying, “A great prophet has arisen among us!” and “God has visited his people!” 17 And this report about him spread through the whole of Judea and all the surrounding country.
It would be a fair comment to say, in relation to the story of the raising of the widow of Nain's son from the dead, that there are miracles and miracles. What we mean is this: it is one thing to heal a paralysed and palsied man, but it is quite another to raise a man from the dead. And, of course, this really raises the issue and question of the miraculous in its most acute form. The position is this: there are those who might be able to accept in principle the validity of the miraculous, so long as the miracles were worked in the realm of nature, sickness and disease, or even demon-possession; but - well, raising a man from the dead, that is something qualitatively different, is it not? It is precisely at this point that reservations about the miraculous gain the ascendant, and alternative interpretations begin to show themselves, from the idea of the widow's son being simply in a coma or swoon, to the suggestion that this is simply a pious legend inserted by the early Church. But it needs to be asserted yet again that a real belief in the miraculous in Scripture means believing that the miracles happened in just the way they are recorded as having happened, literally, truly, materially, and that the accounts are recording literal, historical fact. Furthermore, the difference between healing the sick and raising the dead cannot be justifiably regarded as a qualitative distinction; for, once accepting the miraculous in principle, that distinction necessarily has to disappear. More of this in the next Note.