Acknowledging Our Tears

The third in a series on the Beatitudes

Is it true that God’s blessing is accessible at all times? We have been exploring the powerful teaching of Jesus on this point in the Beatitudes (see “Even Now God’s Blessing Is Available” and “Living Poor in Spirit”). Can this be true even in challenging circumstances marked by loss and grief? Jesus says:

“Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.” (Matthew 5:4)

To mourn means we have lost something. When my father died in January 2025, I wept because one who had meant so much to me was gone from my life. I wept because past experiences felt heavier to remember. I wept because no earthly future events would involve him. There was a sense of loss in a multitude of directions.

But loss of a loved one is only one reason for mourning. We may mourn because our circumstances have become intolerable: a woman abused by her spouse, a family struggling to survive in a conflict zone or famine, parents struggling to provide financially for themselves and their children, someone facing injustice from insurmountable systems. Brokenness within our beautiful world, the wretchedness of circumstances in horizons of possibility can lead us into deep mourning.

Yet without minimizing or erasing these circumstances and situations, Jesus says even here there is blessing: “Blessed are those who mourn” (Matthew 5:4). God has not abandoned those who mourn, although the divine ways may be mysterious and hard to discern. Even here God is with us, which is made evident as Jesus, Himself God in the flesh, stands incarnate to speaks these words of blessing on earth amid the vale of tears.

Comfort, comfort my people,
says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem
and proclaim to her
that her hard service has been completed.
(Isaiah 40:1-2)

All those who mourn can hear a message of comfort from God. The God revealed in Scripture is a God who not only knows our griefs but also steps toward us in our mourning. This God has preeminently stepped toward us in Jesus the Messiah who says:

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. (Matthew 11:28-30)

The invitation to true comfort arrives in Jesus’ incarnation, speaks through Jesus’ Word, and meets us by the power of the Holy Spirit, God’s presence with us now. Amid our grief and mourning, we can turn to the God who is here, who cares, and who brings comfort to our aching hearts. Rightly is Jesus called “the Prince of Peace.” He arrives in flesh and bone as the One of whom the psalmist says:

You turned my wailing into dancing;
you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy,
that my heart may sing your praises & not be silent.
LORD my God, I will praise you forever. (Psalm 30:11-12)

We mourn over specific circumstances, but perhaps more fundamentally we mourn because we know that all of us stand separated from a holy God by our brokenness and sin. We humans often choose our own way, setting out in protest from God’s just rule and joyful celebration in search of our own way and our own place, which ends in “weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 24:51). Our words, actions, and thoughts are, if we are transparently honest, often ruinous for ourselves, for others, and for the creation, and thus dishonoring to the God who has made both us and all creation good.

This invites us into a more fundamental mourning over our state of life as well as a dramatic encounter with our need for God. Even more, as we look around at this beautiful yet broken world, we can grieve over the intensity of sin’s destructive power. We see it in others’ lives and we see it in our own captivity to sin and brokenness overflowing with wrong toward others and even whole groups of people. We mourn over ourselves and our propensity to do wrong. We mourn over others and how we see that true of them as well. We see it in the world writ large, as individual evil forms into injustice in all its individual and systemic forms.

If we fail to name and face into all these types of grief, we rob ourselves of blessing. This is true not only in a spiritual or cosmic sense, although that is true. We also rob ourselves of blessing in a practical sense. Unnamed grief will linger around us like a curse and choosing not to face our tears leaves us stuck in cycles of bitterness.

Jesus Himself wept tears throughout His earthly life: tears of compassion and frustration at Lazarus’ tomb, tears of mercy and anger of Jerusalem at the triumphal entry, and tears of anguish and trust in the Garden of Gethsemane. Weeping is a relief from our internal struggles and our struggles with a world that is not the way it is supposed to be. Weeping can become a pathway into comfort when we allow our tears to bring us closer to God.

Even as Jesus names mourning for what it is, Jesus tells us this does not hinder us from encountering true blessedness or flourishing in God. Yes, we will name grief for what it is and, yes, we should work toward change for good in a world that brings tears for many. Even so, whether change occurs in our lifetime or we seem apparently stuck in systems beyond our control, the light of God’s care can break through. Both in the present moment we can experience God’s comfort in rich yet partial ways, and in the age to come we will experience it ultimately when God will “wipe every tear from their eyes….for the old order of things has passed away” (Revelation 21:4)