Blessed Mourning
It is the word which is used for mourning for the dead, for the passionate lament for one who was loved. In the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Old Testament, it is the word which is used of Jacob’s grief when he believed that Joseph, his son, was dead (Genesis 37:34). It is defined as the kind of grief which takes such a hold that it cannot be hidden. It is not only the sorrow which brings an ache to the heart; it is the sorrow which brings the unrestrainable tears to the eyes.
Sorrow can do two things for us. It can show us, as nothing else can, the essential kindness of others; and it can show us, as nothing else can, the comfort and the compassion of God. So many people in the hour of their sorrow have discovered other people and God as never before. When things go well, it is possible to live for years on the surface of things; but when sorrow comes, we are driven to the deep things of life, and, if we accept it aright, a new strength and beauty will enter into our souls.
As Robert Browning Hamilton’s poem, ‘Along the Road’, puts it:
I walked a mile with Pleasure,
She chattered all the way,
But left me none the wiser
For all she had to say.
I walked a mile with Sorrow,
And ne’er a word said she,
But, oh, the things I learned from her
When Sorrow walked with me!
(1) It can be taken quite literally: blessed are those who have endured the bitterest sorrow that life can bring.
(2) Some people have taken this beatitude to mean:
Blessed are those who are desperately sorry for the sorrow and the suffering of this world.
(3) No doubt both these thoughts are in this beatitude, but its main thought undoubtedly is: blessed are those who are desperately sorry for their own sin and their own unworthiness.
That is what the cross does for us. As we look at the cross, we are bound to say: ‘That is what sin can do. Sin can take the loveliest life in all the world and smash it on a cross.’ One of the great functions of the cross is to open the eyes of men and women to the horror of sin. And when they see sin in all its horror, they cannot do anything else but experience intense sorrow for their sin.
Christianity begins with a sense of sin. Blessed are those who are intensely sorry for their sin, those who are heartbroken for what their sin has done to God and to Jesus Christ, those who see the cross and who are appalled by the havoc wrought by sin.