I’m #Blessed Because I Grieve With Hope

Read the first part of the Beatitudes series, I’m #Blessed Because I’m Poor In Spirit here. 

Blessed are those who mourn. 

It sounds more like a warning than a word of blessing. 

My level of grief in somewhat mediocre.

I have had my fair share of pain but there any many who have experienced much more than I have.

But my life has not been void of grief.

I’ve battled the grief of infertility, of longing for a child to hold in my arms and grieving the loss of babies in heaven. And I have fought the daily fight with depression and anxiety that cripples my ability to speak truth to myself.

I have witnessed friends lose children and spouses and dreams. I’ve watched lives crumble under the pang of sin and destruction in the world. 

But I’ve also seen the abundant blessings that only come when you are in the pit, when everything seems to fail you and your only recourse is to fall on your knees before the Throne of God. 

Mourning often brings us quite literally to our knees. It’s the word we use to describe lament in its strongest form. When we mourn we weep, we wail, we can’t eat, and we sometimes just sit, numb, unable to process what is happening around us. We beat our fists at the ground below us and shake our head at the sky above us, wondering what a good God could possibly be thinking to allow such grief to befall us.

But yet, the same good God told us that we are blessed when we mourn told us we will be comforted. 

“You’re blessed when you feel you’ve lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you” – Matthew 5:4 ESV

When we are at the end of ourselves, the only one we can turn to is God. We are blessed, not because of the grief itself, but because it leads us to a place where we turn to God in a vulnerable way. When we grieve, we are forced to go to the only true source of comfort. 

Our mourning brings us face to face with the weight of the Fall. We grieve because we see the sin in the world. 

But when we see the full picture of the shattering effects of sin, we can gaze at the wholeness to come and the beauty of Christ’s sacrifice in a new way. 

After a dear friend lost her husband, she uttered the words, “I am broken, but every piece is being held together.”

In her brokenness, in the midst of grief that shattered her heart and split it into fragments that felt unbearable, she felt the presence of God around the surface area of each and every fragment.

When our hearts are whole, we do not feel the presence of God sustaining us. You don’t need lifes support when your heart is not giving out. But when you reach the end, you cling to all you have left. 

When we wander through barren seasons, we rely, day after day, on manna to sustain our dying hearts. We need His goodness moment by moment and, when we are broken, we feel it in a new and powerful way. 

Christ said that we are blessed when we mourn because we will be comforted. In the brokenness of our lives, we see God’s power and comfort in an entirely new way. 

Not only that, but He then went on to send the ultimate Comforter to dwell within us. 

But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. – John 14:26, ESV

The Holy Spirit is known as the “Comforter.”

When we need comforting, we feel the full nature of what He intends to do in our lives. Our morning highlights the ache that sin brings to the world, and the Comforter reminds us of the wholeness He is working to restore. 

Because when we mourn, when our hearts are shattered and far away from the Eden, we see a glimpse of what God has intended. We grieve with hope. of the world to come. 

And when we see the goodness of God, of His sacrifice on our behalf and His love for mankind, we are blessed. We are blessed because we see just how truly different this world is from the world to come. 

Creation is aching, groaning with the brokenness it endures. If even the ground itself senses factor between what is and what should be, how much more should we believers feel the impacts of the busted up world on our hearts? 

But in our grief, and we will grieve, we cling to a hope that comes only through Christ. And we see the difference in what it means to grieve with the comfort of a good God and the hope of what is to come.

When we are in the depths of despair, we see that the world is not our home, and are drawn back to the Comforter who holds us as He recreates our hearts and our world to prepare us for the world to come. We are blessed when we grieve because we do not grieve as an end in itself, we grieve with hope as we are comforted by the One who has promised to wipe every tear. 

Read the next article in this series, I’m #Blessed When I Am Meek

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