Blessed Are Those Who Mourn

A chapter from my out-of-print book, An Insider's Guide to the Kingdom, a commentary on the beatitudes.


Blessed are those who mourn, they will be comforted. Matthew 5:4


How can you be blessed when you are mourning? When someone dies, it seems like the light goes out in your life.

A young woman wrote us here at Voice of Prophecy after her fiance was killed by a stray bullet in a drive-by shooting. She described her despair and the tearing of her heart. Was she blessed? It certainly didn't feel that way to her.
We receive letters from parents whose children have died or worse have been murdered. Just the other day, we shared together in our prayer circle, a letter from a mother whose son died after being shot nine times.

In every one of these letters I feel the darkness, the oppression that comes with bereavement. Grief shuts out the future. It shrinks a person's world into a tiny sphere of intense pain. How could it possibly be true that those who mourn are blessed?

I've stood by women who have lost husbands after more than fifty years of marriage. What unimaginable pain they experience. What a huge emptiness the death of their husband creates. I've known parents who have lost a teenager. It seemed to me as a pastor that their grief was the sharpest, most incurable of all.
How do we make sense of Jesus' declaration: "Blessed are those who mourn, they will be comforted"?

There are three distinct messages contained in these few, brief words:

First, if you are mourning, you are blessed, not cursed. When someone you love dies, it seems that God himself has turned against you. The pain and desperate hunger in your heart seem to suggest that God is tormenting not blessing you.
Naturally we ask, "Why?" Why did God allow it to happen? Why didn't he stop it? Why now? Why her? Why him? Why this way? And behind all of these why's is a suspicion that God has made a mistake, or worse, that God is somehow taking out his anger on us. The ache in our heart tells us we are cursed, that God is against us.
But Jesus contradicts our hearts. We are blessed. As I mentioned in the last chapter, and will mention over and over as we move through these blessings, to be blessed means you are favored by God, that God regards you with kindly affection. When you mourn, no matter what your heart tells you, Jesus assures you that you are blessed. You are favored by God.

When Jesus announced that those who mourn are blessed, he was contradicting the primary emotions of grief. Grief makes you feel utterly alone, Jesus declared that God is with you. Grief insists that God has rejected you or is punishing you. Jesus declared that when you're mourning, you're the object of God's special compassion and love.

Jesus' words not only tell us about God's response to our grief, they also are a guide for how to best respond to our friends when they grieve.
When a friend is grieving, don't try to explain things to them. Don't offer theology or sociology or psychology. Bless them. Show them your favor, your affection. Let them you know that you care for them. And the best way to do that is simply to be there.

Be there physically if possible. Keep your friend company. Spend time with them. Your presence says that they are loved. They may ask all kinds of questions. They may express doubts about God, about life. Don't try to answer the questions. In many ways the questions are beside the point. Your presence answers the most important question of all. It's a question that may never be asked out loud, but is one of the most fundamental in today's society: Does anybody care? Does God care? Is what happened simply another meaningless ripple in the endless ocean of time and chance, or did the life of my child count for something? Is my grief for my wife or husband or friend or brother or sister senseless or is their death really worthy of the enormous pain I feel?

Your presence dignifies their pain. It gives nobility to their grief. You help them know that even in the darkness they are loved. They are blessed.
If you can't be there in person write a note. Perhaps use the telephone, but whatever you do, make contact. Let the grieving person know you care.
Your caring will help make real in their life, Jesus' words, "Blessed are those who mourn, they will be comforted."

Jesus was not the first person to announce God's compassionate response to our grief. It's a major theme of Scripture. Consider this from the prophet Isaiah:

The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me,
because the Lord has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, . . .
to proclaim the year of the LORD's favor . . .
to comfort all who mourn,
and provide for those who grieve in Zion—
to bestow on them a crown of beauty
instead of ashes,
The oil of gladness
instead of mourning,
and a garment of praise
instead of a spirit of despair.
Isaiah 61:1-3

Those who mourn are blessed, because God cares for them.

There is another meaning in the words: blessed are those who mourn. Mourning is the reverse side of love. The reason we mourn someone is because we have opened ourselves up to that person, we have formed an attachment.

In this life, any time we love someone we're opening ourselves to hurt. No relationship can last forever in this world, because people don't last forever. But Jesus honors the pain of love. He declares, Blessed are those who mourn.

This is one of the most important differences between the Buddhist and Christian prescriptions for life. In Buddhism a person is counseled to avoid pain by avoiding attachments. But Jesus calls people to form attachments in spite of the pain. The greatest thing a person can do is love—even though we know ahead of time that love will involve us in pain.

Blessed are those courageous enough to open themselves to others in love. "Blessed are those who mourn" really means blessed are those who love. Blessed -- that is specially favored by God -- are the people who love in spite of the risk of betrayal or abandonment and the certainty of death. Blessed are the lovers. Honored by God himself are those who will model their lives after his and give themselves in love.
Are you grieving? Is it because you loved? Then accept your pain as a witness to the reality of your love.

I conducted a lot of funerals in the early years of my ministry. I thought I understood grief. But then my best friend, Bill Shelly, died. I encountered a pain I'd never even known existed. Though I had cared about the grieving families I had served as a pastor, I had never loved any of my parishioners as deeply and personally as I had Bill. I had not invested years of shared life with them. I hadn't intertwined my heart with theirs in the same way.

But when Bill died, the pain cut to the core of my being. There was no detachment, no "non-attachment." The one comfort I found in my grief was the awareness that the very painfulness of my grief was evidence of the value and the depth of our friendship, evidence of our love.

I remember sitting in the Loma University Church during the memorial service. Kimo Smith filled the church with a tremendous concert of great, classic hymns. A Mighty Fortress. For All the Saints. Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee. As the music washed over me, my grief welled up within and I had to pull out my handkerchief.
I was surprised by the tears. I don't cry. But I treasured the tears. They were proof to me of the depth and reality of the friendship Bill and I had shared.
I mourned because I had loved.

Blessed are those who mourn, they will be comforted.

An article in the L. A. Times highlights this "good" side of grief. The writer of the article, Howard Rosenberg, talked about the power of television to blur the distinction between acting and actuality. On TV what appears to be real and candid is seldom exactly what it seems.

". . . nowhere on television is the line separating acting and actuality less discernible than on celeb-laden late-night talk shows, where the performance—a guest's seemingly candid schmoozing with the host in front of millions of viewers—is often mistaken for some kind of bear-all, insightful truth. On the contrary, although there's nothing actually corrupt about the process, it's all part of the show. Give an actor a camera and he acts.
"The few exceptions on TV include the times that Sally Jessy Raphael has spoken of the 1992 death of her daughter, Allison Vladimir, at age 33, and Johnny Carson's heartfelt comments in 1991 when, fighting back tears, he eulogized his 39-year-old son, Rick, who had died in an automobile accident. . . ."

The reason for Rosenberg's commentary was a eulogy by late-night talk-show host, Jay Leno, for his dad. Leno spent eight minutes on his show talking with warmth, affection and heart-break about his father who had died from cancer the previous week at age 83.

Rosenberg wrote:

"It was special; it was memorable. Even rarer for television, it was genuine." ["Jay Leno's Eulogy Does His Dad Proud" L. A. Times August 29, 1994. pp. F1, F10]

One reason Jesus could say, "Blessed are those who truly mourn" is that in mourning we come in contact with the most important principle of life: God made us for love. The value of mourning is so great that even a man of the world like Mr. Rosenberg honors its honesty in the make-believe world of TV. Anything that can actually cut through the artificiality of talk-show TV must be incredibly powerful. Such is the power of grief.

But the Jesus did not simply dignify grief and mourning. He promised deliverance from its pain. Someday, God's going to prove his kindly regard for people who grieve by giving them eternal comfort. Those who mourn WILL BE COMFORTED.
It may seem impossible. It may seem like a fairy tale, but it's really true: Someday grief will disappear. Not because time has finally healed all wounds. Not because the hole in your life has been filled by another person or you have been distracted by busyness. Jesus' promise of comfort is rooted in his knowledge of another world.

Some people find rich comfort and consolation right here and now in the hope of the resurrection. But when Jesus declared that those who mourn are blessed, he was not talking primarily about present comfort. He was not saying that grief is less painful than we imagine. He was not trying to suggest that real Christians don’t cry. No, Jesus was declaring that grief and mourning are limited. The day is coming when they will exist only as faded memories. Grief closes a person in; Jesus' words opened the window on a bright, glad future.

The certainty of a coming resurrection may not be much comfort immediately after a death. At that time the pain of separation is so intense it obscures the future. But after the first, sharp pain has subsided, the prospect of a reunion becomes a constantly brighter promise.

When Bill died, I was included in the private ceremony by his family at the graveside. After the casket had been lowered and we had filled the hole. A couple of Bill’s aunts decided to sing a song. As I recall it was “In the Sweet By and By.” They said something about the comfort they had in their anticipation of the resurrection. I remember thinking, Humph! Resurrection nothing! I don’t to wait the rest of my life to see Bill. I want to be able to pick up the phone and call him tomorrow. I still had decades of living to do. Decades of filling the emptiness. I didn't want some resurrection way off in the future at the second coming; I wanted Bill back in my life right now.

Several years later I found that the resurrection did give me hope and comfort. I look forward to seeing Bill on that Great Morning. But right then, there in that cemetery, any comfort was off in the future. It was not a present reality.
And that is reflected in Jesus words. Blessed are those who mourn. They WILL be comforted. The comfort is certain. But it is future.

If this life is all there is, then for many people there isn't much to life. But this life is not all there is. At the heart of the Christian faith is the confidence that there is another world coming. A world where love will find its natural expression: endless fellowship and communion.

Those who love in this world will experience grief. They will mourn. But those who have truly given themselves in love will find beyond the pain, beyond the grief, eternal comfort, everlasting joy.

Here's the way the Apostle John puts it in Revelation 21:3-4.

"Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away." He who was seated on the throne said, "I am making everything new!"

Are you heart broken because someone you love has left you through death or divorce or a move? Then know for certain that God has a special affection for you. He treasures the fact that you opened yourself up to the hazards of love. And he guarantees that your pain will not last forever. Some day, you grief will be lost in the joy of reunion and restoration.

Blessed are those who mourn, they will be comforted.