Interesting Definition of "Blessed"

"Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted."

--Matthew 5:4

This was one of the verses on a church sign I passed on my way home from work yesterday. I can't help wondering as I read verses like this one if any of the people who post them actually think about what message is being implied by statements such as this. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your perspective), I can't help thinking about it.

  Are people in mourning really blessed? Would they think themselves blessed to be in the midst of an experience that finds them mourning? I could be wrong, but I can't think of a single instance in which an individual feels blessed to have lost a loved one, lost a job, lost their home, or any other scenario which might lead one to mourn. Based on my own limited experiences, it seems to me that it would be safe to say that in most cases, people in mourning are not feeling blessed.

Of course, there is an upside to all this mourning going on. "...they will be comforted." How will they be comforted? Will friends, family, and community come together to help in a time of need? Possibly. But I still fail to grasp the connection to being blessed for mourning. Sure, a person might feel blessed to have a caring network of individuals around to rely upon in dark times, but how does that make a person blessed to be in mourning? This begs the question also of why God would allow bad things to happen to people (thus creating the need to mourn) and then say that those people are blessed because somehow, some way, they will be comforted. Why doesn't God just prevent the need to mourn in the first place, because then an individual might actually BE blessed?

And what about people whose lives are working out just fine? Does this imply then, that they are not blessed, but in fact, are damned for being happy? As far as the comforters go, are they damned as well, since they are not in mourning themselves and are merely acting as facilitators of recovery from mourning for the person who is so blessed? Finally, if the ones who mourn are the ones who are blessed, why do they need comfort in the first place?

Just something to think about....

Quote of the Day:


"You cannot transmute some incoherent mixture of words into sense merely by introducing the three-letter word 'God' to be its grammatical subject."


--Antony Flew