Let’s face the truth head on. We are to blame for any wrong we do. We cannot be substituted out. We are the guilty party and that’s that.
Still worse is that the wrong done cannot be undone — it cannot be made to disappear. The violence, the horror, the damage done cannot be taken back or reversed. That is the truth.
But suppose we are the ones suffering at the hands of foolishly evil behavior in someone else? And suppose it is inflicted on someone dear to us? The more precious that someone or even an animal is to you, the greater your mental anguish when it is made to suffer by someone’s bad behavior.
But the truth brings us face to face with worse news than even that. Foolishly evil behaviors are not reserved for some nasty folks who happened to cross our path. The truth is that in someone’s experience, somewhere, at sometime, we ourselves were, to them, the nasty ones. We acted with cold indifference to the bitter suffering we generated in the experience of someone precious to them. We brought on the heartache and the tears and the unspeakable grief.
If that weren’t bad enough, the truth highlights something even worse. In order to see it, first take a moment to reflect on the mental anguish you at some moment in your life endured upon witnessing someone precious to you torn open on account of someone’s evil behavior. You likely have a troubling emotional resistance to just recalling what happened.
Now take another step. Think: every person you know or have ever encountered in your life is precious to God. In fact, they are so precious to him that to help them he was willing to pay the incalculable price of the death of his own son.
Now take yet another step. See yourself in the act of generating suffering in one such God-loved individual. Is it possible to measure the flood of tears — so to speak — the depth of tormenting anguish God felt by what you did to one he so cherishes? It is not. It simply cannot be measured.
We know we are coming to terms with the truth of this horror when there’s such a piercing pain in our souls and such a flood of tears in our eyes that we cannot believe there’s anything we or anyone could ever do to mitigate our regret. That is the moment we stand to understand what Jesus meant when he said, “blessed are those who mourn”. The word translated “mourn” is the Greek word indicating such piercing sorrow as would warrant endless open wailing in inconsolable grief.
How on earth could Jesus teach that such mourners are blessed, which is to say, happy? Such devastating grief and overflowing happiness are flatly incompatible, are they not? No doubt about it, but only if we close the door of our hearts to what flows from the heart of the one who we ultimately wounded. Yes, we did it. In our wretched foolishness we brought agonizing distress to someone exceedingly precious to God and thereby profoundly grieved his heart.
But even so, here’s his answer found first in Isaiah 43:25 (NIV) “I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more.” Then from Matthew 19:28 and Revelation 21:5 — “At the renewal of all things…I am making everything new.”
The rest of Jesus’ beatitude on those who mourn reads, “they will be comforted.”
Bring yourself to him. Let yourself feel the searing pain, the agony he felt over the heartless brutality of what you did and let the tears flow. But then wait for him in the stillness that follows. He has a renewing touch in store for you that will comfort your heart far beyond what you could have ever imagined possible.
