Power Through The Grace Of Mourning

When we hit the wall of our own poverty, our inability to produce what we long for, we find ourselves facing an even more difficult step of humility – that of mourning over the condition in which we find ourselves. We’ll say this again in subsequent postings, but mourning over our brokenness is really a lost art in our culture. Because we want to have positive feelings about ourselves, we tend to avoid the deep self-examination that faces us with our own poverty, our inability to move forward on our own. We would rather try again by making a career change or altering our marital status. We’d rather read a new self-help book (maybe someone has discovered the magic formula!), try a new church, or perhaps medicate ourselves in some deeper and more damaging way.

But Jesus has given us the way forward, and it requires a significant choice for humility on our part. We must come to the place of mourning, grieving over our condition. This mourning requires a season of reflection, considering the things we have missed out on, the relationships we have lost, the opportunities that have passed us by. We must face the reality of our own choices that have irreparably damaged us and those around us. Most significantly, we must face the anguish that we have brought to God, who created us for His own great pleasure, but to whom we have brought nothing but pain.

Though this is a difficult posture to take, the reward is proportional to the cost. Those who mourn will be comforted. In other words, the pain that we all feel when we consider the broken condition of our lives will be assuaged, and we will know the comfort of the one who has the authority to give it at the deepest possible levels.