Matthew 5:4
I remembered this verse today. I find it quite interesting.
matt 5:4 - Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
It’s like saying that we are blessed when we lose someone. Or we are lucky to have to go through something that wrenches our heart. We are blessed because it is then that we can finally admit we need the peace and comfort that only God can give. Any other takes on this verse? I didn’t spend a lot of time on it.
Olivia,
Your nightly video postcard is – HERE. I’m so excited that you got to go to the Delaware Water Gap today. I’m glad you had a good day. – daddy
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Hi Sweet Nephew,
My take on Matthew 5:4 is that those who mourn are blessed because they will be comforted by God, not because they are mourning.
Thank you for the videos to Olivia. They are comforting to all of us who love you and Olivia.
Love,
Aunt Kim
You are such a fantastic father- Olivia is so blessed to have you!
Darren
I found this website and a kids take on the same verse. Sometimes we learn alot from this little rugrats! Get a minute read a few.
Be Safe
Laura
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted” (Matthew 5:4).
“If you cry, it will get better” is the meaning of this second Beatitude, says Brittany, age 6. Brittany, if you cry for the right reasons, you will indeed get better because God will comfort you.
“This verse means to pray for those who are sad,” says Todd, 9. “Try to help them take their mind off it. Invite them over to spend the night or to a water park.” I don’t know if God comforts by sending the mournful to water parks, but now that you mention it, I’ve never seen anyone mourning while slipping and sliding around curves, screaming at the top of his or her lungs.
“I mourned when my puppy ran away,” says Taylor, 11. “I cried for hours, wanting him back, but he never came back. We got a new dog, but I still cry sometimes.” All of us experience losses, but our hearts don’t want to accept them. We’re left feeling hurt and powerless.
“‘Blessed are those who mourn’ means that God blesses those who have a tender heart,” says Sean, 10. No pun intended, but now, we’re getting to the heart of the matter.
Of all the paradoxes in the Beatitudes, this is the most dramatic. “It’s an astonishing thing to speak of the joy of sorrow, of the gladness of grief, and of the bliss of the brokenhearted,” writes Bible scholar William Barclay. Jesus was called a “man of sorrows” because he understood the destructive nature of sin and evil. Yet it was the joy that was set before him that gave him the strength to endure the cross. Jesus knew that his suffering would both purchase our salvation and please his Father. This gave him great joy and purpose.
We, too, can have joy in the midst of sorrow if we believe that God’s grace and sovereignty are greater than any loss or disappointment. We may not understand why God allows tragedy to strike us, but we can rest in his infinite wisdom and tender mercies. One look at Jesus’ suffering on the cross, and we know he understands our pain.
“This means that those who feel sorry and awful for what they did wrong will be comforted by God,” says Avery, 11. Jesus began his ministry by reading from the Isaiah scroll in the synagogue. He declared that the Lord had anointed him to preach the gospel to the poor and to heal the brokenhearted (Luke 4:18).
King David wrote that a “broken spirit” and a “contrite heart” are offerings that most please God (Psalm 51:17). When faced with the consequences of our own sin and the suffering of living in a fallen world, we can harden our hearts and become cynical or open them by crying out to God for help and comfort.
“It means blessed are those who are lonely, they will be comforted by God,” says Marshall, 9. The pain of our loneliness can be so intense that even our closest friends and relatives can’t understand, but God does. He knows we need fellowship with him and others. The isolation created by self-pity is never the answer.
Author Gene Davenport writes: “Genuine comfort … the strength to endure the ravages of the Darkness without bitterness or despair … is solely a gift. It is the expression of God’s own presence, the assertion of God’s own sovereignty over the Darkness.”
Point to ponder: God will heal the brokenhearted when they look to him.
Scripture to remember: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted” (Matthew 5:4).
Question to consider: In the midst of your sorrow, do you believe God is good?
That is so sweet. I didn’t have a loving father growing up. I can’t even imagine what it would have been like if I did. I think it is so wondeful the relationship you have with your daughter. It’s more than special.
In my own life, when things are going well and I forget about genocide, hunger, cancer, abuse, etc.. I don’t need God. But when I mourn, I need him more than I ever remembered before. And he says that when we seek, He will be found. This is a simplistic answer but the beatitudes over and over say that when your heart is after the things that Gods heart is after (humility, mourning, meekness, righteousness, mercy, purity, and peace)He will be there.
God knows that hardship is sometimes necessary to strip us of our selfish ways.
Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted. My take is sin. When we mourn the sin in our lives, we are comforted by the presence of God.
I’ve lived this verse for the last month.
As I’ve mourned, I’ve spent a lot of time with myself. I saw who I was and more importantly, who I depended on. Even though I consider my relationship with God to be a good one, I still relied more on myself. I just did. So when part of me died, I grieved what was gone. It felt like a hole. A cold, gaping hole.
And God was patient. He let me mourn. He allowed me sadness. I knew He wouldn’t just break my dependence on myself without work. And it’s hard to work at anything when depressed. So I mourned that, too.
But once I let go, I left room for Him to reveal Himself. And His comfort was warm and quiet and complete. It was light.
For me, it took a broken spirit to truly seek Him. And a shattered heart to experience the spectrum of His comfort.
Because we mourn, we will be blessed with the peace and comfort that only God can give. We will be blessed with His continuous presence as we go through the pain and anger of losing a loved one. He knows.
I am not sure. I really have no ideas. I just know you are amazing and I am so blessed by your faith.
PS. I love your video postcards to Liv. I have to say they make me tear up. I guess because I didn’t have a Dad when I was little. She is SO blessed to have such an awesome Father.
I think that it’s much more than Mourning. We mourn because of death and sickness (which are the most common) these are by-products of sin. God is pure, light, love, healing and salvation to name a few..It is in mourning that we are broken. God says that we are the clay and he is the potter. When we mourn we are broken clay aware of our state, moldable and reflective. He heals us by providing comfort, thorough reflection, He starts to remove (pain, jealousy, lust, idols) and build up. (Believe it or not, some Christians still deal with some levels of these sins.) God takes us into another level of spiritual growth and we have to be a broken vessel in order for him to mold or rebuild us. We are unfinished work…and He seeks to complete us..In molding us into someone stronger, unselfish, etc.. God is completing us and in this change is where the blessing falls. We are blessed because He is working in us…through comfort and change…Therefore we are not stagnent but reaching the level of spiritual completeness He has established for us before time…When God starts to work on us..We are receiving blessings.
Hey Darren!
You have no idea who I am, but I’ve been following your blog for a while. Your story of faith is captivating.
Just had to add my two cents to the Matthew 5 verse. I believe the whole beatitude thing is a message of hope. I learned something interesting a while back about the Beatitudes… the word “blessed” in the original Greek is the word “makarios.” Makarios most commonly referred to either Greek gods who were blessed to live in a state beyond cares, or it referred to the very wealthy who were very comfortable and lived a life of ease. Either way, the “blessed” (makarios) ones lived on a higher plane then the rest of us… they lived above the normal cares, problems and worries of common people.
So, here’s Jesus, and He’s using this same word to a group of common working-class people. It’s not the elite, the rich, the powerful or the high and mighty who are blessed… He’s pronouncing God’s blessing on the lowly: the poor, the hungry, the thirsty, the meek, the mourning. Throughout the history of this word, it had always been the other people who were considered blessed. Then Jesus turns it all upside-down… the elite in God’s kingdom are those at the bottom of the heap of humanity.
I believe Jesus is giving us a picture of hope that someday the world will be made right. Some day, He’s going to flip the world as we know it on its tail, and finally, we’ll see the world as it was meant to be. No more hunger, no more poor, no more mourning. The ones who are truly blessed are the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, the righteous.
Anyway, that’s my rambling on the subject…
We are blessed to be human. To be able to mourn to be able to feel. To love, to be touched and then ache. To have and then to lose. To fight and then to make-up. To be blessed and able as humans to feel comfort. Delivered and then taken….:(
It is not the tragic experience but how it drew you to the Lord that makes it a blessing. Blessed because you have walked & talked with the Lord, like no other time in your life. That closeness, that tender love you have experienced (even the closeness of questioning or arguing with the Lord)… others do not know that or have that..you know, you felt it His presence & words cannot express it but no doubt, it IS blessed.
I remember one time when I just started my relationship with the Lord being made fun of & mocked at work for being a Christian. It was humiliating but the Lord said the same thing..blessed I was. I went to the Ladies room, into hiding for a few minutes, to take it to the Lord crying & walked out changed. I just spent time pouring my heart out to God & he listened to me…I talked with GOD & He heard me & He wrapped His arms around me & told me I was His. I walked out thinking how truly blessed I was.
I decided to look it up in the AMP – I’m gonna let it speak for itself…
Matthew 5:
3Blessed (happy, to be envied, and spiritually prosperous–with life-joy and satisfaction in God’s favor and salvation, regardless of their outward conditions) are the poor in spirit (the humble, who rate themselves insignificant), for theirs is the kingdom of heaven!
4Blessed and enviably happy [with a happiness produced by the experience of God's favor and especially conditioned by the revelation of His matchless grace] are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted!
5Blessed (happy, blithesome, joyous, spiritually prosperous–with life-joy and satisfaction in God’s favor and salvation, regardless of their outward conditions) are the meek (the mild, patient, long-suffering), for they shall inherit the earth!
6Blessed and fortunate and happy and spiritually prosperous (in that state in which the born-again child of God enjoys His favor and salvation) are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness (uprightness and right standing with God), for they shall be completely satisfied!
7Blessed (happy, to be envied, and spiritually prosperous–with life-joy and satisfaction in God’s favor and salvation, regardless of their outward conditions) are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy!
8Blessed (happy, enviably fortunate, and spiritually prosperous–possessing the happiness produced by the experience of God’s favor and especially conditioned by the revelation of His grace, regardless of their outward conditions) are the pure in heart, for they shall see God!
9Blessed (enjoying enviable happiness, spiritually prosperous–with life-joy and satisfaction in God’s favor and salvation, regardless of their outward conditions) are the makers and maintainers of peace, for they shall be called the sons of God!
10Blessed and happy and enviably fortunate and spiritually prosperous (in the state in which the born-again child of God enjoys and finds satisfaction in God’s favor and salvation, regardless of his outward conditions) are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake (for being and doing right), for theirs is the kingdom of heaven!
11Blessed (happy, to be envied, and spiritually prosperous–with life-joy and satisfaction in God’s favor and salvation, regardless of your outward conditions) are you when people revile you and persecute you and say all kinds of evil things against you falsely on My account.
12Be glad and supremely joyful, for your reward in heaven is great (strong and intense), for in this same way people persecuted the prophets who were before you.
What always comes to mind when I hear the beatitudes is that my little brother memorized them (not in the AMP) when we were kids – it was a big deal. He had such a sweet, soft heart!
I LOVE so many of the other entries on verse 4!