"BLESSED ARE THOSE WHO MOURN, FOR THEY SHALL BE COMFORTED." Matthew 5:4
OH YEAH?
That's how I felt when I learned of my son's death. That's how I felt months later. There is no comfort in mourning. None. Sometimes all you can do is cry. Sob. Cry out in agony until all strength is gone. All sense and reason vanquished. All pain numbed to the futility of reality.
And sometimes crying does endure for a night and joy doesn't come in the morning. Sometimes the morning spits in your face and says, "See? Nothing's changed. You still have to walk in this valley of death shadows and tread the riptides of current. There are no quiet streams or green pastures. Just dried up reality and deserted wastelands of remorse and regret." Some days you just have to cry and that's all you can do.
So you do. And God is big enough to handle those days, too.
Today I realize in the midst of my most agonizing moments in the nearly two years since my son was killed, that God was not somewhere in heaven looking down on me with empathetic eyes. He was not tending sheep in greener pastures. He wasn't parting Red Seas or closing the mouths of lions. No. God was holding me in the palm of his hand. I could not see tomorrow for the imprint of his fingers pressed ever so gently against my face. Not only did he hold me, but He held all my pain and agony, too. And when I'd cried all I could cry and screamed all I could scream, he bottled my tears in His bottle to pour out as a balm for my soul.
When I didn't want to draw near to Him, He was near already. He'd never left me. He's with me now. And He is my comfort. Not people. Not verses. Not songs. Not nature. He is my comfort--He alone. In Him there is no mourning. selahV [copyrighted, SelahV Today, 2007]
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