When can I mourn? At a funeral, I am often asked not to wear black because the person who has passed wants their friends to celebrate their life. Yet Jesus said,
Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted.
Matthew 5v4
Those who mourn are blessed now because they will be comforted in the future. So this place of mourning is a blessed place.
Jesus mourned. When Lazarus died, he wept. He knew Lazarus would rise, but that knowledge did not stop him embracing how he felt. When Jesus was riding into Jerusalem he mourned over the city (Luke 19). He would be rejected by the nation and the consequences for both him and the city would be dire. He was suffering loss at the rejection of those he loved.
In both these cases Jesus was blessed because comfort was ahead. That certainty did not block his mourning.
There is a humility that embraces the fact that I am not where I want to be. To mourn is to experience loss of what has been special. If I suppress that loss, I lose something of God’s comfort, even the Holy Spirit our comforter. It is a tragedy to harden myself against God’s love coming in unexpected ways.
What would it look like for you to mourn?
Photo by Nik Shuliahin 💛💙 on Unsplash