A puzzling paradox
In past weeks, I been reading the Beatitudes and found myself lingering on, “Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted.”
Jesus was unafraid of a paradox but this is extreme, shocking us into attention. In my experience of loss, blessing is not the first word that leaps to mind. How can mourning be blessed?
Whilst the losses we face are often products of living in a cursed world, it has helped me to see that the process of mourning can become blessing in the comforting arms of God.
It is tempting to try to bypass grief because grieving hurts. Some Christians act as if the promise of heaven gives us a way round grief. But Jesus gives us another model; he wept openly for Lazarus even although he saw resurrection in sight.
Even mourning can become blessing when we mourn with God. At times, it didn’t feel like that for me but I begin to see the depth of this promise. It can become blessing when we mourn with the one who mourns with us, who is tender and compassionate, who promises beauty for ashes.
Mourning can become blessing because grief is not the end of our story; we grieve with hope, knowing that every tear will be wiped away. And here and now, our place of grief can become a place of blessing when it becomes a place of encounter with the comfort of God.
Whether we have lost a loved one or not, all of us need comforting because all of us get cut in this broken, jagged world. How wonderful that comfort and compassion are inextricable in Scripture. When we bring our pain to him, God runs to embrace us, filled with compassion, like the father depicted in Luke 15. Even when his son’s degradation is self-inflicted, still the father enfolds that ragged, emaciated body with love. We can all find ourselves in that embrace.
We can bring our mourning to God - all of it - both our personal grief and our grief for the state of our world. That’s when we discover that the comfort of God is not nice platitudes or cosy escapism. When God comforts us, ALL is set to right. The hungry are fed, the prisoners are freed, the downtrodden are raised up.
I loved hearing this week of St.Paul’s Hounslow being filled with food for the hungry and caring for refugees. The vicar was asking for old smartphones to give to refugees who want to contact their families. That’s comfort in action. (Let me know if you have one and I will pass it on.)
Always with God, the plan is bigger than we expect. He comforts us so that it would overflow to his world. We are comforted to comfort just as we are blessed to be a blessing. We encounter God to become an encounter with God for others. May that be true for us.
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Credit to Craig Whitehead@sixstreetunder on unsplash for the photo
