“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” Matthew 5:4 NIV
When I think of mourning, I think of how you respond when you lose a loved one to death or you lose a friendship. So, when I read the verse for today, my mind goes to the question ‘How can someone who is mourning be blessed?’ The reason for the mourning in the Beatitudes is not the common reason of mourning over a lose due to death.
In the Beatitudes Jesus is referring to mourning as being the attitude a Christian holds in their heart towards sin. As a sinner who does not know Christ, a person who has sinned may feel bad about what they have done, or they may not. If they do feel bad about their sin, it may be that they feel bad for hurting someone’s feelings or for lying to someone. People who are not born-again do feel sorry for behaving in ways that hurt others or they deem to be wrong.
However as a Christian, the attitude that we hold in our hearts towards sin goes deeper than simply feeling bad for committing the sin. The attitude is not about getting caught after having committed the sin, it is more about the sorrow we feel because we have now placed a barrier between us and God. God cannot and does not look at sin, so once we have sinned, we have made the choice to place that sin between us and God. We have moved away from our Lord and Savior.
As God’s children, separating ourselves from Him causes us pain and grief over the lose of that closeness we have when we are not sinning and placing barriers between us and God. Our sin also causes God pain and grief. He doesn’t want us to be separated from Him or He wouldn’t have sent Jesus in the first place. He wants us close to Him but He won’t be close to sin. Once we realize that the deep pain and grief we are feeling over our sin is about having grieved God, having sinned against Him, then we can be moved to the point of going to God and asking for forgiveness.
The second half of the verse states that those who mourn will be comforted. The level of comfort that is needed to relieve this type of pain and grief only comes from God. It cannot come from anyone else or anywhere else because no one else is who we have offended by our sin. True comfort comes only from confessing what we have done and asking forgiveness from the One who we have offended and moved away from – God.
The great news is that once we have acknowledged that we have sinned, have gone to God and sincerely asked for forgiveness, we are forgiven. He gives us that comfort of being forgiven and being able to move back closer to Him. Remember back to being a child and having done something that upset your parent or someone who was very important to you, now remember what it was like when your parent or that important person forgave you and opened their arms inviting you in to show you how much they have forgiven you and truly love you. That feeling of warmth and comfort found in that embrace, that is the feeling we can experience as a child of God when we repent of our sins. However, that feeling goes much deeper because it is God we are getting that embrace from.
Are you in a place of mourning right now? Do you feel all alone because you have moved away from God? I pray that you will go to God today and ask for His forgiveness, that you will accept that forgiveness from Him and that you will rest in the embrace of our Heavenly Father as He pulls you closer to Him. If you are mourning today, please go and be comforted by the only true source of comfort, our Lord and Savior.