Printed from: https://www.cmf.org.uk/doctors/devotion/?id=devotion&day=16&month=6
Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted. Matthew 5:4
There is a profound truth here that many interpreters have failed to appreciate. But doctors, nurses and clergy who meet dying people and bereaved families know that mourning in bereavement leads to comfort and eventual healing. It is those who do not mourn we should worry about. Such people are not blessed. Instead they are at grave risk spiritually and emotionally, for the symptoms resulting from suppressed grief may blight their lives and affect their families for decades ahead. An evangelical Christian woman of 23 was pregnant when her sailor husband drowned when his ship was torpedoed. She bore if bravely without emotion, as she had been taught Christians should. Forty years later the symptoms of spiritual pain still dominated her life as she herself was dying, and caused unhappiness and near despair in her daughter's family and those who missed her.
I wonder whether Jesus was thinking of a particular person or small group of bereaved people when he said this. That would be so like him!
Divine Comforter, thank you that we can look to you
when we mourn, knowing that you can in your time and
in your way turn our sorrow into joy.
Further reading: Is 61:1-3. Lk 4:16-21.
DA
