Blessed Are Those Who Mourn

I have always clearly understood this concept in the Bible, perhaps because I have mourned a lot and have seen the spiritual benefits to mourning. The reason Jesus said this is because he was essentially saying, "Blessed are those who feel deeply," or "Blessed are those who care."

Some people prefer to not care about anything and shut their emotions off. This is sad but it is common, because when you really care, there really is a lot in life to be sad about.

If you really care, then every single person you know who most likely isn't saved will make you sad. If you really care about others, then every time a parent yells at their child you will be sad. If you really care, then every time someone sins and hurts themselves or another person it will make you sad.

Most people prefer to not be sad all the time, so they prefer to just not feel anything. But that is not strength, that is weakness. Only the strong chose to feel everything deeply because they can handle it, with God's help. And the people who feel deeply, are those God can actually use to change the world, because they deeply love and care for others. Amen.

To mourn is also to be closely in sync with the Holy Spirit inside of us. The Bible says that we can grieve the Holy Spirit. There are a LOT of things that grieve the Holy Spirit. The more grief we feel over sin, in ourselves and in others, the more we are feeling what the Holy Spirit feels, which is good. That is why we are blessed when we mourn when we should, because our heart then most resembles God's heart.

To think that God is a callous, uncaring, and distant person is very wrong. In Mt. 23:37 Jesus said, "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing." God/Jesus cares for us as much as a mother cares for her child. God's love is tender and concerned, always. What hurts us deeply, hurts God deeply. When we reject God, God feels pain, because he love us and he cares.

Also, do not think that God is unconcerned with what hurts you. He is very concerned. When you mourn, God mourns. Psalm 34:18 says, "The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit." The rest of the beatitude says, "Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted." As a parent, don't we somewhat like it when our children are in pain, because then we can be closer to them? They run to us for comfort and we then get to be closer to them.

It is the same with God. God loves when we run to him when we are in pain, because it is in that time when we are the closest to God and God feels the closest to us. Like the poem "Footprints" it is in our hardest times when God carries us and holds us. :) This is why, if we seem to be going our own way too much, God might cause pain in our lives to cause us to run to him more.

So pain can be good, and mourning can be good, because it is in those times when we draw the closest to God. The Bible says, "Draw near to God and he will draw near to you." It is not in the times when we feel the most blessed and everything seems to be perfect that we are the closest to God. It is actually in the hard times that we are the closest to God. Paul says in 2 Cor. 12, "That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong." It is when we are the weakest that we are the strongest, because then we are leaning on God and not ourselves. Amen.

God bless!