From Friday…But we must remember the beatitudes are not as much about our circumstances as they are about how we respond to them.  We can’t change the past, but we can forge a different future.  At this juncture the act of mourning prepares us for a blessing and to be a blessing….

The Bible is full of mourners.  It might seem ironic to some that the “Good Book” would be so full of sorrow, but one of God’s greatest gifts to us in His revealed Word is the transparency of human drama.  We remember David’s lament at the news of His son’s death, “O my son Absalom!  My son, my son Absalom! If only I had died instead of you–O Absalom, my son, my son!” (2 Samuel 18:33)  But we also remember David’s sorrow over his personal sin with Bathsheba and his longing to be clean again: “Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow” (Psalm 51:7).  The Bible even contains an entire book of mourning called “Lamentation”, considered to be the prophet Jeremiah’s painful perspective of the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple.

In the New Testament, parents mourned over the loss of their children (Luke 7:11-15), Jesus mourned over the loss of a friend (John 11:35), and disciples mourned over their failure to be faithful under fire (Luke 22:61-62).  Yet, mourning in the Bible was never considered a permanent state.  In fact, it was known to be a necessary part of the healing process.  In a Psalm prepared for the dedication of the temple David wrote, “For his anger lasts only a moment, but his favor lasts a lifetime; weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning” (Psalm 30:5).

Perhaps you have cried yourself to sleep and awakened to a new day with a new sense of God’s presence and hope.  Sometimes our pillow is filled with many tears over a period of many months, but the dominant theme in the Bible is that mourners will be comforted and even in the midst of life’s greatest heartache God is working.