“You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle. Psalm 56:8”
Pastor Steve read from Matthew 5 in his latest sermon. I have heard the Beatitudes read probably a million times in my lifetime. Never did verse 4 jump out to me like it did in this moment. “Blessed are those who mourn…”
Blessed? You’ve got to be kidding me!
Mourning is not particularly pleasant.
Recently a caring friend asked me about how I felt about a certain aspect of grief. We talked about timetables for grief. We chatted about those we knew and how they grieve. I find for myself that grief has been most unpredictable. Trying to find a place for her picture on my new walls has presented a challenge I could not have foreseen. But that’s grief.
As I sat re-reading the Matthew verse, I thought about how many times I’ve tried to imagine how my life would be without my daughter’s untimely passing. While I feel like I have adjusted and am doing ok with the life altering loss, it still touches life in some way, almost daily. Sometimes I don’t even realize how it slips its way in.
I have had to come to grips with it (grief) entangling itself in what I say every single time I write. I’ve wished it not to be so. But it is. I have come to the conclusion that if my writing is truly a God calling, then apparently what I feel as I write must be the current message HE wants me to share in this place and time. And I have come to realize that it may not be for anyone else maybe, but simply for my own healing and wholeness.
The rest of that Matthew 5 verse is so so precious. “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. “ It doesn’t say might or may, it says will! To me that is all the comfort I really need – the promise of the hope of a brighter tomorrow. If not here, over there with the blessed comforter Himself!
Thank you Dorothy 💕