Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted

I am so tempted to help this stuff make sense. Surely you can see why. On its face this beatitude is absurd. "Blessed are those who mourn." What the heck does that mean? Happy are the sad? How fortunate are those who are weeping? Congratulations to you with broken hearts? If that makes sense to you, then please take a seat at the head of the class and leave me here with my dunce cap because to me it seems the exact opposite would be true.

I might expect to hear Jesus say, "Go and comfort those who mourn," or "Tough break all you mourners," or "Keep your chin up, mourners," or even "What a rotten thing it is to mourn." But no, Jesus says that those who mourn are blessed. They are fortunate and have reason to be glad. And just what is the reason mourners are blessed? Help is coming. They will be comforted.

Now, that's a divine passive if ever there was one. God is the great Comforter. It's a reminder that God never abandons the grieving. Though He may seem distant, silent, even cold -- Mathew says He sees our grief and he will make it right. Thus, mourners are fortunate and even they -- no, especially they have reason to be glad.

Commentators seem drawn to tell us what the mourning is all about. Mourning over personal failures, or over the state of the world, over sin, decay , disease. Mourning over lost persons. But Jesus doesn't complete the painting, he merely makes a broad stroke. "Blessed are those who mourn." If He doesn't qualify its meaning, then perhaps we shouldn't either.

Mourning cannot be limited exclusively to expressing sorrow for one's sin... or grief surrounding death.... Rather, "those who mourn" has the more comprehensive sense of Isaiah 61:2-3, an inclusive grief that refers to the disenfranchised, contrite, and bereaved. It is an expression of the intense sense of loss, helplessness, and despair. --Robert A. Guelich, The Sermon on the Mount.

Sometimes when we are filled with gladness and life is easy, we feel less need for God and have less room for Him in our lives. Maybe, and I imagine you've experienced this before, maybe suffering and pain, mourning and grief are blessing, even cause for gladness at times because they hollow out in us a space for God and his comfort. Blessed are those whose grief reveals in them the God-void, for God Himself will fill their deepest need.