Matthew 5:4

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”

Do you feel “blessed” when you are mourning the loss of a loved one, relative, or friend? How about when you mourn over a broken relationship? A lost job? A prodigal child? Your health? Your finances? Honestly, I don’t think any of us feel particularly “blessed” when mourning comes our way…so what is Jesus getting at here?

It helps to look at the Beatitudes as a list that is ascending from one truth to the next. So, you are blessed when you are “poor in spirit” because the knowledge of your spiritual poverty drives you to the Gospel. But, do you mourn over your sin? To see it accurately is one thing. To mourn over it is quite another. This is the kind of mourning (or sorrow) that leads to true repentance.

I don’t now about you, but I don’t weep too bitterly over most of my sin. There have been times when it drives me to the ground in guilt and shame and mourning, but most of the time I just confess it and move on. In those moments, I am making little of the thing that helped nail my Savior to the cross. In this regard, the words of William Barclay are a great comfort but also a sobering challenge:

“Christianity begins with a sense of sin. Blessed is the man who is intensely sorry for his sin, the man who is heart-broken for what his sin has done to God and to Jesus Christ, the man who sees the Cross and who is appalled by the havoc wrought by sin. It is the man who has that experience who will indeed be comforted; for the experience is what we call penitence, and the broken and the contrite heart God will never despise (Psalm 51:17).”

May we all react accordingly to our sin, whether exceedingly grievous or seemingly trivial…because when we see ourselves and our sin accurately…and respond accordingly…our loving Lord is there to comfort and restore us. Amen.