Those Who Mourn

God of every blessing, I invite You to shape my soul with Your words and inspire my life through Your works. Teach me to walk in the way of blessing.

Pause and pray

Today I am reflecting on one short sentence from perhaps the most revolutionary message anyone has ever preached, ‘Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.’ (Matthew 5:4)

I want to be happy, but life can be hard. I carry wounds. Sometimes I feel the burden of sorrow. As the proverb says, ‘Even in laughter the heart may ache.’ (Proverbs 14:13). When I feel low, it’s easy to say, ‘Cheer up!’ or ‘Don’t worry, be happy!’; but maybe Jesus is saying to me today, ‘No. Now is the time to get real – time to acknowledge your grief.’

In mourning I find wholeness, for the Lord draws close to a broken heart.

Am I in pain? Do I carry wounds? Am I grieving? I ask the Lord to show me what I need to mourn. I invite the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, to bring joy in place of my sorrow.

Pause and pray

I think of someone I know who has suffered loss this last year. Perhaps they have lost a partner, a parent, a sister, a brother, or even a child. Perhaps they have lost a job, a relationship, or their health.

Lord, would You come near and comfort them.

Pause and pray

People often think of the Sermon on the Mount as, ‘the essence of Christianity’. But, as Bishop Fulton J. Sheen once wrote, ‘let any man put these Beatitudes into practice in his own life and he too will draw down upon himself the wrath of the world… Everybody wants to be happy; but [Jesus’] ways were the very opposite of the ways of the world.’*

Pause and pray

Lord, I yield to You all my guilt and grief, my disappointments and sorrows. In the words of the poet John Donne,

Batter my heart, three person’d God; for you

As yet but knock, breathe, shine and seek to mend;

That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend

Your force, to break, blow, burn and make me new.**

Amen.

* Fulton J. Sheen, Life of Christ (London: Pan Books, 1969) p131

** John Donne, Divine Poems XIV ‘Batter My Heart’