There is a kind of grief that heaven calls “blessed.” Not the self-pity that curls in on itself, but the honest mourning that rises from seeing the brokenness of our world, our own hearts, and the distance between what is and what God intended. Jesus tells us that those who mourn in this way are not abandoned; they are actually on the pathway to a very real comfort that only God can give.

The Strange Blessing of Mourning

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” (Matthew 5:4) These words flip our instincts upside down. We tend to label the happy, successful, and unbothered as “blessed.” But Jesus says blessing belongs to those whose hearts are soft enough to ache—over sin, over suffering, over the dishonor done to God’s name. This is not a morbid obsession with pain; it is a Spirit-awakened awareness that things are not right and cannot be made right by our own strength.

In Scripture, godly mourning often leads to repentance and renewal. When Peter realized he had denied Jesus, “he went out and wept bitterly” (Luke 22:62). That grief did not destroy him; it prepared him to be restored and used mightily by the Lord. James writes, “Grieve, mourn, and weep. Turn your laughter to mourning, and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and He will exalt you.” (James 4:9–10) The Lord uses our tears, especially over our sin, to soften hard soil and plant seeds of deeper obedience.

Comfort That Comes from His Presence

When Jesus promises comfort, He is not offering vague encouragement but Himself. “The LORD is near to the brokenhearted; He saves the contrite in spirit.” (Psalm 34:18) God’s answer to sorrow is not distance but nearness. Through the Holy Spirit—the “Comforter” whom Jesus sends—God steps into our pain to carry what we cannot carry and to whisper truth when our feelings scream lies.

Our Savior knows tears from the inside. At Lazarus’s tomb, “Jesus wept.” (John 11:35) He wept even though He knew resurrection was minutes away. That means He does not rush us past our grief; He enters it with us. Paul calls Him “the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.” (2 Corinthians 1:3–4) The comfort we receive in Christ is meant to spill over, making us gentle, patient people who sit with others in their sorrow and point them to the One who never leaves.

Hope That Outlives Our Tears

For those in Christ, mourning is real—but it is never final. Isaiah promised that the Anointed One would come “to console the mourners in Zion—to give them a crown of beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, and a garment of praise for a spirit of despair.” (Isaiah 61:3) Jesus fulfilled this, and He will finish it when He returns. Our tears now are wrapped in the sure hope that they have an expiration date. “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the former things have passed away.” (Revelation 21:4)

Until that day, we are called to live as people who grieve differently. We do not deny pain, but we also do not grieve “like the rest, who are without hope.” (1 Thessalonians 4:13) We bring our sorrow—over loss, over sin, over a groaning world—to the feet of Jesus and let Him shape it into prayer, repentance, and compassion. Today, where is God inviting you not to numb out, but to mourn before Him—and to let that mourning move you to trust, to obedience, and to love for others who are hurting?

Lord Jesus, thank You that You draw near to the brokenhearted and promise real comfort to those who mourn. Teach me to bring my tears and my sin honestly to You today, and move me to comfort others with the same mercy I receive from Your hand.

Once the prophet, the apostle, the reformer, saw a vision or heard a voice, or in later times had an encounter with God through the holy Scriptures and went out firm and sure to declare the Word of the Lord. Now we watch the world to get our next cue and when we have been tipped off as to what our latest "burden of the Word of the LORD" (Zechariah 12:1, KJV) shall be, we rush out and breathlessly declare the expected message as if we had been with Moses on Mount Sinai. It takes a war, an election, race tensions or an outbreak of juvenile crime to afford subject matter for our modern prophets. . . .The world always moves first and the church comes meekly after, trying pitifully to look and sound like her model and at the same time maintain a weak religious testimony by inserting a dutiful commercial now and then to the effect that everybody ought to accept Jesus and be born again.

Secularized fundamentalism is a horrible thing, a very horrible thing, much worse in my opinion than honest modernism or outright atheism. It is all a kind of heart heterodoxy existing along with creedal orthodoxy. Its true master may be discovered by noting whom it admires and imitates. The test is, Whom do these Christians want to be like? Who excites them and makes their eyes shine with pleasure? Whom go they forth to see? Whose techniques do they borrow? Never the meek soul, never the godly saint, never the self-effacing, cross-carrying follower of Jesus. Always the big wheel, the celebrity, the star, the VIP--provided of course that these persons have given a "testimony" in favor of Christ somewhere in the midst of the fleshly, vain world of artificial lights and synthetic sounds which they inhabit.

The sad thing about all this is its effect upon a new generation of Christians. Whole companies of young people are growing up who have known nothing else but the degenerate brand of Christianity now passing for the religion of Christ. They are the innocent victims of a condition which they did not help to create. Not they but a spiritually emasculated leadership must answer for their plight.

What is the remedy? It is simple. A radical return to New Testament Christianity both in message and in method. A bold repudiation of the world and a taking up of the cross. Such a return on any wide scale will mean a reformation of vast proportion. Some that are now high will be brought low and many of the humble will be exalted. It will mean a moral revolution. How many are willing to pay the price?

Be astonished, O ye heavens, at this! and be ye very desolate, saith the Lord; for My people have committed two evils: they have forsaken Me, the Fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water. - Jeremiah 2:12-13

It does seem inexplicable that if a man has once got a glimpse of the beauty, preciousness, and sweetness of Christ, His love and His power, his eyes should ever turn away or his heart ever become unfaithful. And yet it is the history of the Church as a whole, and of the individual members of it. As to the Church as a whole, how early it needed to be said, "Ye have left your first love"! and how constantly it has had to be repeated ever since! The apostles were not cold in their graves when grievous wolves began to enter in and spoil the flock. The law seems to work almost inevitably that close on the heels of every period of earnestness and quickened life there shall follow a period of reaction and torpor. However high the arrow is shot, the impulse that sped it on its way heavenwards soon seems to die, and gravitation begins, and down it comes again.

Look at Germany after the Reformation. Look at the England of the eighteenth century after the outburst of Puritanism. Look at the deadness that fell upon the first periods of this century after the strong new life of Whitefield and the Wesleys. Look all over the history of the Church, and you find the same thing. Then ask the question: Is there any more convincing proof of a living Christ than the fact that the Church has not been dead and buried long ago? And is there any better sign that Christianity is not of man than the fact that it has always been so hard for men to keep themselves for any length of time upon its level?

I am sure there is not a man or a woman reading this that has not had moments of illumination, when the conscience was quickened, and things that they thought they believed all their days flared out upon them with altogether strange and startling force and reality. And what has become of the moments, what has become of the impressions that were made upon us then? Where have they all disappeared to? and what is left behind when the heavens have closed again? Use and wont has gathered about us once more; the old opium soporifics that have lulled us to sleep so often have been quaffed again; and after the momentary illumination and expansion, we have fallen back into the miserable old ruts of half belief and whole indifference, and yet call ourselves Christians. I was reading in a book of African travel the other day that the great mountain-peak of Kilimanjaro will lie for weeks and weeks hidden behind the mists, except now and then in the morning, when, like an apparition, its wedge forces itself through the rolling vapour, and for half-an-hour it gleams there, the lord of the landscape; and then it is blotted out. How many of our lives in their morning hours had a vision, when the rolling lies, unsubstantial but opaque, which veiled the realities have been swept away, and for an instant you saw what is always there, whether you see it or not, the reality of God in Christ, His love and His work for you?