The Happiness Project: Mourn

Now, Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on the mountain and after he sat down, his disciples came to him and he opened his mouth and began to teach them saying:

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

This is God's word. Let's pray together.

Lord Jesus, we thank you for your teaching on the Sermon on the Mount. Lord, it is life changing stuff and we thank you for the beatitudes particularly. Lord, we pray as we consider them that you would enliven our minds that we would understand what you are teaching but more than that, Lord, enliven our hearts. Lord, we would pray that you would change us by what you have taught us. Especially as we consider verse four about mourning and comforts. Lord, need that deep into our souls. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

The Beautitudes, Not Beatitudes

Well, as I mentioned, we're doing our sermon series on the beatitudes but we're not calling them the beatitudes. If you were here last week, you remember that Jeff calls them the beautitudes. He's doing that because often times the beatitudes are seen as a list of things that you should do—a list of shoulds, kind of disconnected from one another. But he argued last week, and I think effectively and rightly, that the Beatitudes are really a description of what the beautiful life is. They're a description of beauty more so than they are a list of things that you should do. I know we like our to-do lists, but that's not what Jesus is doing here.

What Jesus is doing is actually trying to transform, turn upside down our understanding of what actually is beautiful. And we saw that very effectively in last week's sermon. Last week was on verse three:

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

That seems upside down. Shouldn't it be the rich in spirit, the really spiritual people that inherit the kingdom of heaven? Not the poor in spirit. That's backwards.

This Week: Blessed Are Those Who Mourn

This week, we're going to look at verse four:

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

John Stott actually says of this verse that it could be translated not "blessed are those who mourn" but "happy are those who are sad." That is exactly backwards. That's upside down.

You know, my kids really like the movie Mary Poppins Returns. We like the first one better—sorry, but the second one's pretty good. And there's a scene in Mary Poppins Returns where they go to visit Mary Poppins' cousin Topsy, played by Meryl Streep. There's this broken bowl and they want to get the bowl fixed. And Topsy is really good at fixing things, but there's a problem with Topsy. Like every second Wednesday of the month or something—I forget the date exactly. But there's this certain day where everything turns upside down for her. And that's the day that they go to get her to fix the bowl and she can't because everything's upside down.

But there's this song that she sings where she sings about her experience of being upside down. In the song, Mary Poppins and the kids are all singing and things in the house also get turned upside down. By the end of the song, she's not lamenting the fact that that day is upside down. She's rejoicing in it because she says essentially that it changes her perspective. It gives her a new view. She calls it turning turtle—so you just picture a turtle being turned upside down.

That's in some ways what the beatitudes feel like for us. It certainly would have been how the Jewish people would have received this. "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." That's not what they wanted to hear from Jesus because they were the ones they thought were rich in spirit, right? The sons of Abraham—they were the ones that were supposed to be getting this gift. And so what he's saying is exactly upside down to them. It's backwards and offensive. It's saying stuff like this that got Jesus killed, because he's saying exactly the opposite of what people wanted to hear.

"Blessed are those who mourn, happy are those who are sad," is also the opposite of what we want to hear. It's turning us and our perspective of things turtle, upside down.

And so this morning, that's what we're going to do. We're going to try and shift our perspective in the way that Jesus is instructing us to through these beatitudes to try and see the beauty in mourning.

Two Points This Morning

Then we're going to look at the comfort that is promised in this passage. So, two points this morning: First, fortunate are the sad, or happy are the sad. And then the compounding comfort that this passage offers. So we're going to look at the mourning and we're going to look at the comfort. It's just following the verse.

It's not rocket science. This is easy. Two points. First of all, fortunate are the sad or blessed are those who mourn. What is the mourning that Jesus is talking about here? Because we mourn all sorts of things. There are all kinds of ways in which we experience sadness, and I think he's speaking of a very specific kind of mourning or sadness here.

I think the context of the beatitudes is key. Remember I said that often times they are treated as though they are separate "should" statements. I don't think they're separate at all. I think they build on one another. The fact that this one follows "the poor in spirit"—that's essentially what is being mourned. And the fact that what follows is "blessed are the meek" and then "blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness"—we're getting a sense of what is being mourned. Specifically, that is our sin, our brokenness, and the brokenness of the world.

If you mourn and are sorry and are saddened by the brokenness that you find within. If you are sick and tired and get nauseous when you think about the damage that is done by your wrongdoing to other people. If that leads you to a point of grieving, of mourning, of sorrow. If that takes you as though to a funeral, to weep and to lament over the dead state of your soul. Then you're mourning the way Jesus is talking about.

If you are walking through this world and you see injustice after injustice, if you see hurt after hurt, if you are tired and sick to your stomach of the way that the world does not work the way that it is supposed to work. If you are sick of seeing that and you are at a point where you look at this world and you have nothing to offer it but tears. Then you're mourning the way that Jesus is talking about here.

Understanding Through the Opposite

One way to understand this is to imagine Jesus saying the opposite. What if Jesus were to say, "Cursed are those who are happy"? Because that's also what he means. If you are satisfied with the state of your soul, your sin—if you think, "I'm a pretty good person and I'm happy with myself. I've got high self-esteem. I'm great. I love myself as I am"—then you'd be cursed. Why? Because you'd be satisfied with a position on yourself that is not God's position. You are looking at yourself exactly the wrong way.

God gave mankind over to the sinful desires of their hearts. — Romans 1

Essentially, if you're satisfied with your sin and the sinful desires of your heart, that's going to lead to being cursed. Similarly, if you're happy with this world, if you think, "I'm good. I like it the way it is," then that is a curse too, because God has intended something far greater for you.

I'm often satisfied with this world. Right now, I'm in the midst of a constant cycle—the reality of where we live. I am always looking on Zillow because somewhere out there, there's a house that's a little less expensive than mine with a little more space and a little more central to downtown, with all of the amenities that I want, that'll allow all of my kids to be far away from me in the house so that I do not hear the noise that they make. And if I can just find that house, then this world will be enough.

Oftentimes, we surround ourselves with these comforts, and specifically, we have a lot in this country and we can surround ourselves with all kinds of comforts and we can become complacent and satisfied with it. We can section off all of the injustice in the world and we can become happy with where we are and we can say, "You know what, God? It's really nice that you sent your son and gave us your word and all this stuff, but really, we don't need you. We've got everything we need." If that's your position, then you're cursed.

In an upside down world with upside down hearts, Jesus is trying to turn us right side up.

The Addict Analogy

Another way of thinking about this is addicts. You know some addicts? You do, because we all are in some way or another. But I'm talking about hardcore addicts—the ones that you really are concerned about are the ones that are happy in their addictions. Addicts who are fighting, who are saddened by the reality of all of the ways in which their life has been diminished by their addictions—you have some hope for them because they see that they need to get out. That's what Jesus is trying to do.

And by the way, Jesus is not saying here that blessed are those who mourn. He's not saying you can't have joy in this life. That's not what he's saying. He's simply saying that your joy is in something else. It's a different kind of joy, and he's going to expound on that later in the sermon. But this doesn't mean that you can't have joy. It simply means that you are willing to enter into a place of sadness over your sin and the brokenness of this world.

And why is that blessed? I suppose in one sense, it's blessed because we recognize we need out, right? But more than that, it's blessed because it moves us into the same space emotionally as God himself.

Think about God's heart with regard to the fall and to the broken world that we live in. Let me just tell you, he's not happy about it. He's not rejoicing over the fact that there is death and sin and that his perfect creation has been marred.

The Old Testament describes God's emotional state with regard to the brokenness and fallenness of the world. With Israel, when Israel abandons him, he describes himself as somebody who's gone through a divorce from a spouse who has cheated on them. That's not a happy place. That's a place of mourning, lament, and sorrow. And he brings that home through the prophet Hosea, who very clearly presents God's position, his posture.

Similarly, the brokenness of the world—God refers to himself as a vineyard keeper whose vineyard has been trampled. He describes it in Jeremiah, right? He's done all this work and it's been trashed. That's not something to celebrate. He's not happy. He's sorrowful. He's saddened over that.

And we see it in Christ most clearly. When Jesus comes, he laments. He was a man of sorrows. He entered into our suffering and he wept over it. He weeps over the brokenness of the world. When he looks over Jerusalem to pray over it and considers all of the hardheartedness of the people, all of their sin and rebellion, he just breaks down and cries. At the tomb of Lazarus, when Lazarus is dead—one of the most profound and amazing things in all of scripture in my opinion—he starts crying. He's not happy about death. He's not happy about sin. He's not happy about injustice.

So when we are mourning, we're moving into the same space as God. We're moving into a kingdom posture that is his primarily, and we find him there. Our tears that are shed—our holy tears that are shed over our brokenness and the brokenness of the world—they are sacred to God. Isaiah talks about him wiping away tears. The Psalms talk about him keeping tears in a bottle. He saves them. He cherishes them.

And we see that very clearly with Christ. He's at dinner with a Pharisee and this woman shows up and is just bawling, ugly crying. Mary Magdalene. She's weeping so much that she's washing his feet with her hair and her tears. And what does Jesus say? Does he say, "Get this woman away from me. This is a distraction and terrible and ugly"? No, not at all. He says to the Pharisee, "This is it. This is the way you should be. This is your posture." He cherishes that act.

I want you to get a sense of just how uncomfortable that would be. Imagine you're at lunch and someone comes in and does that. Imagine someone walks in right now and starts doing that. They're snorting. They're crying so hard and it's such a distraction, right? Except Jesus says, no, that's not the distraction. That is it. Blessed are those who mourn.

Do you cherish tears that are shed over the brokenness of this world and over the brokenness of us? I don't think we do. Here's how I know we don't. I tread in the world of brokenness—the brokenness of the world and the brokenness of people. I have conversations about that all the time. As a pastor, people want to come and talk to me about that. And often times, when people start talking about that, they start crying. And you know what happens immediately after that, almost every single time? Soon as someone starts crying, the next thing they do is apologize. "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I don't mean to cry. I'm really sorry about this. Oh, forgive me. I don't mean to. I'm not normally this emotional." Everybody wants to back away from it. They want to apologize for it as though it's some sort of imposition.

I want to just say to you, if we're ever meeting and you start crying, I want you to know that I cherish your tears. I don't want you to apologize. I want to thank you for taking me to a place where our Lord lives because that's what you've done. Your tears are sacred to God and they should be honored. I don't think we honor them. I don't think we even want to go there.

I know that because I'm like the king of avoiding going there myself. Part of why I'm so honored when other people cry is I don't cry a lot. I got a text right before this sermon. I'm not going to say who it came from, but it was like, "Really? You're teaching the one on mourning? You?" I gotta say that's accurate. I'm known as the joke guy, right? I'm a funny guy. I like to keep it light and fun. I have Nerf guns in my office. Mourning—it is kind of funny that this is the one that was given to me, because I'm really good at using humor to keep from going there. That's the honest truth.

Ask me how I'm doing. Nine times out of ten, the answer I give you is, "I'm living the dream." Or at least that was the case until about two years ago when a friend of mine said to me, "You know, the number one response of people who are suicidal when they're asked how they're doing is 'living the dream.'" I was like, "Stop looking into my soul. What are you doing?"

The Ways We Avoid Grief

This is my M.O. I want you to be comfortable. I don't want you to be uncomfortable. I would apologize if I started crying because I don't think you would approve of me if I took you into that uncomfortable place where I'm actually weeping over the brokenness of my soul. I want to avoid that at all costs, but keeping it light. Other people do other things, and sometimes I do those other things.

I've noticed that in this kind of context, especially here in the triangle where everybody has, like, five master's degrees and a PhD, we love to avoid sorrow and sadness and lament by just getting busy, right? "This is sad, but we don't need to dwell on that. Let's just roll up our sleeves and get to work. We can fix this, right?" I just want to say to you guys, don't take this personally—NC State people—but your engineering degree cannot fix this world and it can't fix your soul. You can't work enough to solve this problem. All you're doing is preventing yourself from going to the sacred space of sorrow over this by busying yourself and distracting yourself. Don't do that.

Others of us like to replace sadness with anger, right? If you like power, anger feels a lot more powerful than sadness. Sadness feels powerless. It's like, "I am just sorry and sad over the brokenness of this world," but instead of doing sadness, what we're going to do today is anger because that feels better. I'm going to push the anger button. I'm going to push it hard and I'm going to basically tell you that none of this would be happening if it weren't for you. This is your fault. If I was in charge, it wouldn't be a problem. But of course, that's not true and that's not really reflective of how we feel. That's just a disguise. In the same way, my jokes are disguises. Don't do that.

And some of us like to drown our sorrows. If comfort's your thing, this is what you like to do, right? You get on Zillow and you look for that house, or you go and you find a very nice big bottle of something at the ABC store, or maybe there's other drugs or other comforts that you run to—like Netflix. Whatever your comfort is, you drown yourself in that and then you have this kind of very short, brief comfort that's not lasting. It ultimately just distracts you from the pain that's still there underneath it all.

These are the things that we do to avoid going to this sacred place to meet with God, to sorrow over our sin and the brokenness of the world. We do it all the time.

Inviting Comfort with Sadness

Rather than moving into that space, what I want to invite you to do is to spend some time just thinking on the beauty of what it looks like for you to adopt the same perspective of God over yourself and over this world and to be comfortable being sad. That takes some discipline. It takes a little effort.

I remember a particular time in my life where I was really sad, where I was really broken, where my sin messed up a lot of things for a lot of people and especially me. And I remember long nights sitting in it. I kept trying to come up with ways I could fix it. Couldn't fix it. Kept trying to come up with jokes that would make it okay and make everybody feel better about it. That didn't work. The only thing that helped was for me to sit and cry out at night in my prayers: "Lord Jesus, come. Come." And He does. That is what is so beautiful about this space. Just as He interacted with Mary Magdalene, He comes and He comes to comfort.

He comes because he understands. He's in that space. He's right there alongside of you. He got there first. And that is an absolute thing that you should do. Spend some time in the afternoon thinking about what are the griefs that you're covering up or running away from or hiding from. Spend some time in those places with the Lord. And allow him to meet.

Because the second point of this sermon, the second point of what Jesus is saying is not just blessed are those who mourn but also for they will be comforted. He's offering comfort in the midst of that sorrow. I want to get the sense of that—there's a future tense to what he's saying. Will be comforted. There's a reality in which, though by his coming he has begun the process of comfort, there's a sense in which when he died and rose, which was future tense from when he was saying this, there was a big increase in comfort. And there's a sense in which when we arrive in heaven, the comfort that we have there will be incredible compared to the comfort that we're now experiencing.

So there's a progressive nature to this comfort. But I want to say that it's compounding. Recently, my son, James, we were talking to him about savings. My wife, who is a certified public accountant, sat him down and started explaining Roth IRAs and compound interest. We pulled out the spreadsheets and we were like, alright, here's what happens if you just put $100 in the bank and here's what happens if you put it in a Roth IRA. And when he got to that bottom line, he was like, wow. I'm going to start investing in a Roth IRA. And he is. My 10 year old. But that is the comfort that Jesus offers us. It's a comfort that compounds. It's compounding. It's growing. It's getting bigger and bigger exponentially in ways that are astounding.

Jesus Comes in Personal Presence

First of all, I want to see that he came in personal form to comfort. That was the initial comfort. Jesus came. He's present. There's something about being alone that makes misery worse. Sorrow and mourning when you're by yourself—misery loves company. But really, when we are miserable, we need to be reassured that we're not alone. Jesus and the comfort that he offers came so that we would not be alone. He's present, in the moment.

If you read the gospels and look at the person of Jesus, there's a study called the Person of Jesus—creatively named by a Presbyterian. It's designed to force you to look at him. And if you read the gospels, looking at who Jesus is, when you see him with broken people and the way in which he is present with them—look at him with the widow. Look at him at the tomb of Lazarus. Look at him with Mary Magdalene. He's all in. He's there with them.

There's a big buzzword right now, empathy. Just consider the tomb of Lazarus. How empathetic is Jesus? We're talking about a God who is so powerful he can raise people from the dead. He made them. And he's there at the tomb of Lazarus. He also knows everything that happens, everything that will happen. He knows what he's about to do at the tomb of Lazarus. He's going to call him out from the tomb. He's going to raise him from the dead. Emotionally, is Jesus helpless? Is he hurting and lost in that moment? Is he like, "Gosh, I don't know what I'm going to do. Lazarus is dead." Not at all. He knows. He's powerful. He's going to raise him from the dead. No problem. And yet there he is with Mary and Martha who feel helpless, weak, lost. They're weeping. So what does Jesus do? He weeps.

How much empathy does it take to be that powerful and yet feel that helpless? Nobody is as present as Christ. That's comfort—to have someone who comes that empathetically and is so caring. Watch his general interaction with everybody that he comes into touch with, but notice how powerful he is. That's the difference between his comfort and our comfort. We can chip in and help. We can point people to worldly comforts.

We can do little bits here and there, and if we're sanctified, we can point people to Christ because that's really the only help we can offer that's lasting. Because he is the only one who can comfort in a way that actually solves the problem. We like to think we can, but it's only him. He comes and he suffers and he dies. He experiences everything we experience. So he's right there with us, and yet he rises, defeating death. He's the only one that can turn you right side up and the world right side up, and that's in fact what he does. When he comes on the cross and with the empty tomb, that's what he's doing, right?

And so comfort came in a person. I hope you see that those of you who are in Christ have an incredible personal comfort from Christ, but it doesn't stop there, right? The Bible goes on to talk about that comfort being increased exponentially, right? We want to talk about how close and personal Jesus was. He says, "Hey, I gotta go up to heaven. You know why? Because I'm sending you something better. What is that, Jesus?"

John 16

"I'm going to send you the advocate, also called the comforter." He's not talking about a warm blanket. He's talking about the Holy Spirit who's going to come and essentially apply his work and his person to your life. Essentially, if you're in Christ, you have him inside of you. It doesn't get any more present than that.

And then, what does that Spirit do in every situation, in every case of suffering, hardship, brokenness, sin? He runs you to Christ. That's what the Spirit does. He puts a spotlight on Jesus. And so if you're in Christ, the comfort that you have in Christ isn't just something that's out there. It's something that has infected your soul and is starting to affect the way that you see everything around you—to the point where things like suffering stop looking like suffering.

What does James say in his epistle?

Consider it pure joy, my brothers, when you experience trials and hardships of every kind. — James

Look at the early church. You have all these people who are just lining up to be killed for Jesus. Justin Martyr said, "You can kill us, but you cannot harm us," because the comfort that has infected the souls of those early church fathers is so great that none of the brokenness of the world can infect it. It's like there's automatic comfort that's built in because I know what Jesus has done. I already know. I know he's powerful enough. I know he's here with me. I know he's present. I know I have him. You can't take him away from me. Take everything else. As long as I have him, there is nothing that can impact me, right? It's a restoration of the way we were created—beautiful dependence upon our creator who is present with us and who upholds us and who will not let us go.

You see? The comfort increases exponentially and it keeps growing. It's so abundant. It doesn't just stop with us. We began the service with this passage from Second Corinthians chapter one:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort which we ourselves are comforted by God. For just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance, so also our comfort is abundant through Christ. — 2 Corinthians 1

We're so comforted. We can't help but run around and comfort other people. Do you see? It's no longer the fact that we are in a comfort deficit, right? The compounding interest of the comfort of the Holy Spirit has now increased it to such a measure that we now must explode with comfort. We have to organize things like a community care team. We have to run around and sit with people and encourage them in any way that we possibly can, and ultimately point them to Christ. Because that's the exploding, exponential comfort that the Holy Spirit points us to, right?

How We Comfort as Christians

I do want to spend just a moment to talk about how we comfort, though. How we comfort as Christians. And I want to have a little talk that gets a little real because I want to point out that not always are Christians viewed as the most comforting people to hang out with when you're feeling bad. Okay? This might get a little uncomfortable, but bear with me.

You know, because the way that we comfort sometimes, we fail to cherish the tears of those who come to us. Because we want to mash the fast forward button. We don't want to get into the places of sorrow and sadness. We want to just hit the button where it's fast forward to heaven please, and then what we do is we wind up kind of telling people who are hurting, "Hey, the fact that you're hurting is because you're just not believing enough. You need to fix your eyes on heaven, right?" And what we do is we bumper sticker our faith and then we use those as band aids.

Bumper stickers do not make good band aids. I'm not a doctor, but the phrases that we use often definitely don't. They hurt more than they help. Things like, "You're too blessed to be stressed," right? "You've got Jesus, so just grin and bear it." Those things are true, and I want to be careful because I want us to offer the hope of Christ. But sometimes the way we do it makes it seem like we're actually afraid to go into the sorrow with people. We want to skip some very important steps. Rather than actually cherishing people's tears and entering into the sorrow with them the way that Jesus did, we just keep their sorrow at bay by acting like everything is already fixed. I don't need to actually go there with you, right?

So we have to be careful of that.

Two Essential Responses to Sorrow

The first thing that we have to do when people come to us who are hurting, who are sorrowful and lamentful over their sin or the brokenness of the world is we need to cherish their tears. We need to act as though they are inviting us into a really beautiful place when they share that with us.

And secondly, we need to actually go there with them. We need to enter into that expecting that God will meet us, and that it's not as though their sorrow is some problem that we have to fix. That's what we do, right? Someone comes in, they're crying, and we immediately want to fix it. "Let me do whatever I can to make you stop crying, to make you feel better," as though I'm the engineer that can fix the world and the brokenness of our souls. I'm not that person.

There was an article that I read in preparation for the sermon that talked about a person who was really hurting, and all these different well-meaning Christians came to them with various phrases that were really ultimately hurtful and harmful. Rather than acknowledging the reality of the pain and hurt and sorrow that the person was experiencing, they just jumped forward to the reality of the comfort that we have in Christ.

Sometimes, for those of us who are here and we're reformed—we're a Presbyterian Church, we're reformed—this is what we like to do with people that are in pain or in sorrow. We say things like, "Well, God has a purpose." Is that true? Yes, that's so true. I remember a girl in college actually broke up with me and I was really upset about it. She said, "Well, God has a purpose." He did. Her name is Katie Sutton and I'm really thankful. But at the time, I was like, "Man, come on. Really?" That's not how we enter in with people.

It's just better to come alongside them and say, "Man, I'm so sorry. I want to be here with you in this. I want to weep with you over this," just like Jesus wept at Lazarus' tomb, rather than saying, "Mary, Martha, it's going to be okay. I have a purpose." We want to be with them, and we want to be with them with God.

The Right Approach to Comfort

I want to be careful because eventually, all of those things do have a place. There is hope in Christ. When you are actually soaking in the lament with people, there is lots of opportunity to show Christ to them. But it begins with you not thinking or acting like you're the one that's going to fix it. It often looks like prayer going before the one who actually can. And that's Jesus, not you.

Which in some ways is good news, right? It's not up to you to fix it all. When people come to you and they're sorrowful, you don't have to come up with the right thing to say perfectly in all cases, in all situations. All you have to do is go in there sorrowful, confident that God is real. You're not God, but He exists and He's doing great things. And then you wait for Him to do it. Sometimes you wait a long time. Israel waited a long time. We've been waiting a long time. But that's what we do. We wait on Him.

This comfort that He gives in the waiting—I want to point to the reality that it is really powerful. That bottom line, that heavenly reality of the comfort that we have, it's so much better than we think. I'm just going to end with this. C.S. Lewis from The Great Divorce. I've used this quote before. It just blows my mind. You gotta think about it though, because this really puts into perspective what God's up to with this comfort thing.

So in the book, C.S. Lewis is traveling from hell to heaven and he's describing what he sees. He has this conversation with someone in heaven. This is essentially about the reality of the retroactive comfort and the blessedness that we have because we have it.

Son, he said, you cannot in your present state understand eternity. That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporal suffering, "no future bliss can make up for it," not knowing that heaven once attained will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say, "let me have but this and I'll take the consequences." Little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of the sin.

Both processes begin even before death. The good man's past begins to change so that his forgiven sin and remembered sorrows take on the quality of heaven. The bad man's past already conforms to his badness and is filled only with dreariness. And that is why the blessed will say—the blessed will say—"we have never lived anywhere except in heaven," and the lost will say, "we were always in hell," and both will speak truly.

Jesus saves your tears in a bottle because when you get to heaven, they will be glorious. They will be glorious memories of power that he performed in the past, and they will bring him glory because he will have transformed them into something beautiful and amazing.

Blessed are those who mourn.

May we be a people who honor the tears of those who mourn in holy ways, the way that Christ told us to.

Lord Jesus, we thank you for your word. We pray that you would help us, Lord, to mourn, to see as beautiful the things that you see beautiful. Lord, you're turning an upside down world and upside down people right side up. Lord, help us to take on that perspective. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.