The second blessed attitude is “Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted.” In Matthew 5:4, Jesus is saying that those who mourn are blessed! The values of the Kingdom of God are spectacularly different from the world's values, aren't they? In our times of mourning, we have his promise of a special blessing and comfort.
That does not mean your faith is weak when feel sad as you mourn the loss of a loved one. At Lazarus’s funeral in John 11:35 and 36, Jesus wept so much the crowd exclaimed, “Behold how He loved him!” You don’t have to hide your grief to receive this blessing.
Paul wrote in 1 Thessalonians 4:13 that when we lose loved ones who believe in Jesus, our sorrow is different from the world’s hopelessness in the face of death. When David lost a child in 2 Samuel 12:23, he expressed the hope and grief of godly mourning when he said, “I will go to him, but he will not return to me.” If we trust in Jesus, we can expect to be reunited with our children and believing friends and family who have passed away. But our sadness and hurt at this temporary separation is real.
In order to receive God’s blessing and comfort, you must admit that you need it. Bring the pain of your loss and the heavy questions you have been holding to the truth of Jesus’ love and promises for you. Jesus’s promise, a challenge to the disappointment and fear he saw in Lazarus’s family was “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?” in John 11:25 and 26.
Some Christians feel their mission is to be a “wounded healer:” someone has experienced pain but been comforted by God, ready to tell every other hurting person Who and where the real Comforter is. Many people will tell you they believed in God and knew about God, but they did not know God until they experienced a level of suffering only God could comfort. When they were driven to discover the Comforter, they established a relationship with God.
The Message paraphrase of the Bible says the second beatitude this way: “You are blessed when you feel you have lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One (Who is) most dear to you.”
Please take a moment to pray, thanking God for His comforting presence and promises. Ask Him to show you how to give away this comfort to those in your life who need it.
This post is adapted from a lesson of the Mini Bible College, an online study of the whole Bible. We highly recommend their audio resources and written materials, available in many languages, to anyone who wants a stronger understanding of the Bible.