“Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted.”

Matthew 5:4

(shall be comforted – paraklethesontai – God will come right alongside and will be with us.)

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The demands our griefs place on God will be satisfied.

This is what strikes me as I consider the audacious phrase shall be comforted and the fullness of its meaning. Whether here, in this earth, or in the reaches of eternity, Jesus is promising that the nearness of his presence – His presence! HIMSELF! That’s the antidote to mourning! – will satisfy the grief and loss we now experience.

He has that kind of power inside himself: the kind of power and goodness and love it takes to comfort, restore, and make utterly, incredibly, new. It is Jesus who can absorb the sins and hurts and traumas and losses of this broken world, Jesus who absorbs them into himself, who eases the burden off of our broken souls and transfers it into his being. It is Jesus who has the power and ability to take all of our grief, hold it near to his heart and offer us something eternally good, gentle, and abundant in exchange. It is Jesus who can break the chains, demolish our prisons, heal our fears, calm our hearts, pull us past our shame, take the sting out of our memories. It is Jesus who rewrites those memories so that we find HIM when our minds take us back. At some point, because of his nearness, the balance more than evens. The gaping holes in our hearts will be tended with comfort until comfort tips the scale, until we are whole – no, until we are more than whole, until we are brimming over with abundance.

Remember the word blessed?  How literally the Greek word signifies becoming long, becoming large?

I’ll tell you what becoming large and long means. It means:

Becoming Abundant.

Whew. Becoming abundant. Do you see?

“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”

(John 10:10)

Becoming abundant are those who mourn, for I will be with them.

YES.

Fully provided for and becoming abundant are we who grieve the loss and death (of a person, relationship, hope or anything else!) for in our mourning we are called by name and brought into the intimate presence of God himself; God comes alongside us; God is with us. 

God is with us.

God with us.

Emmanuel.

Remember?

So, becoming Abundant are those who mourn because…Emmanuel.

Oh Jesus.

This God who is WITH US satisfies every longing, every doubt, every question, every confusion, every pain with his presence.  This God who is with us meets the demands of our inflictions by giving us himself. We will be brought into abundance – abundance of spirit, of heart, of healing, of joy – abundance of fellowship, intimacy, relationship with HIM – because this is the God who sits with us in the ashes and the God who raises us out.

In him I live and move and have my being.

This post is part of Survivor Songs, a 31-Day series. A full list of posts is found here.