Good Mourning

Today I actually attended "big church" instead of working in children's ministry. (This is the first time I have done this in like 6 months). Pastor Jesse was speaking on the beatitudes, specifically Matthew 5:4 "Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted." This is a verse that I have read several times and have heard several sermons on, so I didn't expect to gain much insight from this message, but boy was I wrong. 


Before today, when I heard the word "mourn" I just thought of people being really sad about someone dying. But when I read the verse on my own, I substituted the word "mourn" for the word "sad" (or "are sad"). When I put it in that context, this verse was very encouraging to me. It meant that every time I was sad, that God would comfort me. This was a good thing, because as many of you know I am kind of a cry baby. These past few months have been especially difficult for me and full of mourning. I mourned the loss of my boyfriend and the future I thought we had. I mourned losing my job and the security that came with it. I mourned the fact that my best friend didn't want to date me. I was almost always sad about something. This is where my frustration came in. I was sad all the time, but rarely felt God's comfort. This was because A) I was not turning to him to comfort me, I just expected Him to make me feel better and B) I was not mourning the right things.


Today I learned that when this verse talks about mourning it is talking about mourning our sins. It meant becoming aware of our sin and being sad about it. Now this is not exactly the easiest or most fun thing to do, but I learned today that it is so important. The reason why is because if we don't become aware of our specific sin and we begin to hide behind the line "I'm not perfect, but neither is anyone else" then we begin to justify and become ok with our sin. The more we do this then the less significant Christ's sacrifice becomes. If we don't mourn our sins (and the sins of others) then we are basically saying " What I do isn't really that bad". Once we fall into this mind set then we begin to minimize God's love and salvation.


I never really thought that way before. I realize now that it is so silly of me to mourn the things God has planned for me, when I should be concerned about mourning my sin and getting right with God and having a  deeper appreciation of his amazing sacrifice. Now I'm not saying that you should never be sad, what I am saying is that we need to keep things in perspective. We need to realize our specific sin and remember that we are not that great, but that we serve a God who is. That is the comfort that the verse is talking about. We will seek comfort in the fact that even though we mess up all the time and deserve death, God has already taken care of that and  selflessly put Himself in our place. I can't think of anything more comforting than that.


BB