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“Blessed
are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted."
~ Matthew 5:4
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Lament
& Love
In
Lament for a Son, Yale philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff
recounts the tragic mountain-climbing death of his twenty-five-year-old
son, Eric.
Several
years after this heart-wrenching loss, Wolterstorff noticed that the
wound “is no longer raw. But it has not disappeared. That is as it
should be. If he was worth loving, he is worth grieving over. Grief is
existential testimony to the worth of the one loved…. Every lament is a
love-song.”
Two
thousand years ago, Jesus declared, “Blessed are those who mourn.”
(Matthew 5:4) It must have struck his first hearers as oddly as it
strikes us. What’s desirable about grief? What’s attractive about loss
or suffering? These questions lead many pastors and scholars to
spiritualize the saying. Surely Jesus means “those who mourn over
their sin.” Perhaps not.
Psychologists
reduce grief to various stages—denial, anger, bargaining, depression,
and acceptance. We’ve studied it and categorized it. We’ve determined
what’s normal and what’s not. Every stage or component has a
time-frame. We want to understand it … and get over it.
Yet,
in our hurry to minimize grief perhaps we minimize love. The heart is
only broken when it loses what it loves. So, our woundedness speaks of
our tenderness. Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved
at all. It may not feel that way at the time. But in the act of loving
we are most like God.
The
words of Jesus strike us as strange for another reason. Shouldn’t it
read differently? “Blessed are those who finally get over mourning.”
After all, sadness leads nowhere but to the basement of the soul and
nobody finds abundant life there.
Or
perhaps Jesus should have said, “Blessed will be those who mourn
because it won’t last forever.” But He surprises us by declaring that those
who grieve are blessed in the midst of their grieving. It defies our
expectations.
Yet,
Nicholas Wolterstorff suggests that the tears of a broken heart flow
from its tenderness. And a soft heart, sufficiently supple to love
sacrificially, is a true blessing—not because it is impervious to pain
but because it connects us more closely with the Father.
Laments
truly are love-songs, and those who grieve remind us of a profound
privilege, the gift of love. And for those who follow Christ, we have
not just the gift of love but the confidence of resurrection. We shall
be comforted.
Perhaps
our tears give testimony to our hearts and our faith—hardly something
to suppress. “Blessed are those who mourn.”
In
HOPE –
David
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