Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
The mourner’s heart is not one that has simply been touched briefly by sorrow, a tear drop that evaporates on a sun baked cheek. It is a heart that has been broken because it has been willing to care deeply. It is a soul that has made itself vulnerable, exposing the most tender of flesh to the elements and risking that sorrows will embed themselves like irritants, slowly to become pearls. To mourn is to be moved to action by these heartbreaks. To have loved and suffered loss like the God of creation.
As we walk toward Golgatha, we must allow our hearts to be broken again and again by the injustices of a sin-shattered world. We grieve at the single mother who desperately lets her infant slip away. Tear are shed as we witness the public video of two young people who have so devalued one another through casual unfaithfulness and then subject each other to further humiliation. We mourn our relatives who refuse to be humbled by the cross, oblivious to their eternal fates. We are moved to act to stop the slaughter in Darfur.
Yes, let’s just give up secular music for the next forty days. We can mourn at not hearing the latest cultural contribution by Beyonce. Or, shall we expose our tender hearts to the arrows that pierce the Lord’s heart?
LOVE | ACCEPT | FORGIVE 