Blessed are those who mourn?

Many of our international readers of this blog will not be aware that many people in our part of the world (Victoria, Australia) are facing floods, with the ruin of their homes, businesses, churches. As i write this a vast inland body of water is moving as a flood inexorably across the landscape, flooding small rural towns and farms as it goes. To add to this grief, for many of these towns it is the second time they have faced flood inundation in a period of 3 months. Many had just finished cleanup from the previous flooding and are faced with it all over again. In the face of this, many people are wondering just how, or if they can face it all over again.
In the light if this i felt that this excerpt from a sermon by Rev Carol Merrit, is quite appropriate.
"Why would Jesus have the audacity to say this? (Blessed are those who mourn) Where is the blessing in this raw, open wound? Is the blessing upon those who mourn simply hinged upon this future hope that they will be comforted? Or is there, somehow, a blessing in the midst of it? Is there some blessing in the grief and the sadness that washes over me?

Of course, Jesus knew about grief. Even in this small account, Jesus had come from healing. The crowds surrounded him, they pulled upon him, and he saw the broken and the wounded. He saw the mothers with dying children and the children who had been left parentless. We know some things about how Jesus felt in these circumstances. We know that when Jesus healed, he could feel a bit of power leaving him. And when we read that Jesus bore the sins of the world, I imagine they weighed heavily upon him--the crushing burden of our cruelty toward one another. And in this moment when this teaching rises up from him, I wondered, did it emerge from his powerless, burdened mourning? Did he feel that exhaustion and that bit of pain creeping into his joints? Is that why he left the crowds and sat down? Did he just need to gather with his friends and reflect on how upside down the world seemed to him at that moment? It is as if in these words, he sees the needs--the hunger, the thirst, the longing--and, somehow, he sees blessing in all of it.

Perhaps we can't even understand these words until we become poor or meek or contrite. Perhaps we don't know what they mean until our stomachs ache with a roaring hunger and our tongues stick to the roof of our mouths with thirst. Maybe, maybe we cannot understand the words when we feel the most blest. Perhaps they only make sense to us when we hit rock-bottom. When we're so ashamed of what we did the night before that our lips tremble. When we are about to lose the home we are raising our children in. When we finally realize that we have no control over our addiction. When we are in such mourning, that we stare at the ground as we walk and we cannot look up.

We don't like this. We don't walk through the valley of the shadow of death in our culture. We like to run through it quickly. We use Kubler Ross' steps of grief as hurdles that we can bound over if we run fast enough, and people ask us why we haven't "gotten over it yet." I don't think we've take the time to stop, to appreciate the blessings of our mourning.

But they are there. They are there with the widow who sits in the Lazyboy where her husband used to relax, just so she can remember the sweetness of his presence. The blessings are there, when we are sorting through clothes, and we suddenly are enveloped with a waft of perfume that reminds us of Christmas with our mom. When the walls of our home seem to be haunted with our lover and we don't ever want to leave. The blessings are there in the facts that the ways in which we hurt each other seem to fade, and the resentment is replaced with understanding. The blessings are there, as we defrost the homemade casseroles that the church-ladies delivered. And they are there, as we eat fried chicken and tell each other stories until our sides ache with laughter as well as pain.

These words. They have traveled a long a way to greet me today, in my bitter, angry grief. And yet, somehow, they have never been so comforting. And I know that I am blessed.           

Let us pray. O God, our Creator, surround us in our blessedness, in our grief, and in our sorrow. By the power of your Holy Spirit. Amen.
http://day1.org/2543-blessed_are_those_who_mourn