God's Comfort

Jesus said, “Blessed are they that mourn for they shall be comforted.”

Many times we try to spiritualize this beatitude and make it mean something spiritual in nature but I believe Jesus was dealing with a very important part of the human psyche that is often damaged by not knowing how to properly deal with loss. Grief is a normal part of life on earth. We’re in a temporary situation. People die. Things get lost. Favorite clothes wear out. Friends move away. Loss will always be a part of our lives as long as we live. None of us live forever in this life, so all of us will die and when someone dies, it is not only normal, but helpful, to grieve.

When Jesus told us to mourn, it was so we could experience comfort. He wanted us to know loss is important and should be dealt with constructively. For example, we can know a deceased loved one is with the Lord and doing well in eternal bliss, but we still miss them terribly and we need to grieve our loss in order to receive God’s comfort.

Jesus included mourning in his list of beatitudes so we could understand that grief is God’s gift to deal with the temporary nature of all things earthly. Since loss is a normal part of the human condition and it can sometimes be devastating, we need to learn how to deal with it.

Sometimes the loss will be minimal and fleeting—such as the loss of a beautiful flower that fades. You are sorry the beauty is gone and it must be discarded, but the mourning is minimal because it was expected and can be replaced by another flower or a work of art that pictures the flower.

But sometimes the losses are huge as we mentioned earlier, such as the death of a family member or friend. Or, the loss of a job we depended on for income and life purpose. In such tragic or difficult situations the pain can be excruciating and extended. If we ignore the pain or try to stuff it down somewhere into the inner parts of our psyche, the pain will not go away, it will just fester and boil until it finally breaks out in some physical or emotionally unhealthy way.

So, as Jesus said, we need to grieve our loses. The grief should be appropriate—we should not grieve to the point of being inconsolable for an insignificant loss, nor should we try to move on too quickly when the loss is considerable. But whatever the situation, be sure to grieve your losses so you can experience God’s comfort.

Notice Jesus didn’t just say “Blessed are they that mourn”. He continued with the encouraging words “for they shall be comforted.” Notice particularly that he said “be” comforted. This implies someone else is involved in the comfort and I think we can assume he meant God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. When we grieve our losses, we experience God’s comfort. When we help someone to grieve appropriately, we work together with God in his comforting work.

At the loss of a loved one, grief is God’s way of helping you through this difficult time to victory in the days ahead, so just let him love you and share your grief. Take the time you need to find healing. Grief is God’s process to bring you complete healing, but it takes time. Time is part of the healing, so don’t rush anything so significant.

I'm Rick Blumenberg . . .and that's My View from Tanner Creek.

Earth, The Cradle of Life

John tells us in his first letter to the church that "...God has given us eternal life and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life." (I John 5:11-12)

In other words, life does not exist without Jesus Christ.

Physical life is dependent upon Jesus because He is both Creator and Sustainer of all life. Every living creature, all minerals and plant life exist through the life of Jesus. Apparently, if He would cease to live, all other life would instantly cease as well.

Does this mean the cycles of life—spring, summer, fall and winter might lose their consistency? Atoms, which make up everything physical, would dissolve? Planets and other heavenly bodies might fly out of orbit and explode into nothingness? I’m not sure, but I know without Jesus, creation would return to the void from which it came.

Jesus, of course, who is himself God, will always live as Creator and Source of all of life (both physical and eternal) because as God He cannot die. He created physical life as a cradle for eternal life. The cradle is temporary, as all cradles are, but it is God’s plan that during physical life, in Christ we discover a oneness with our Creator and begin to live in the fullness and abundance of His Life, which is not temporary at all, but everlasting, or eternal.

Paul wrote about it in Acts 17:24-28(NIV).
"The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. 'For in him we live and move and have our being.'…”

In this life we all live in the Presence of God through Jesus Christ and enjoy the benefits of his Life even though many don't know him, or, if they know him, they reject him for some trivial thing they think is more valuable. However, as long as we live this earthly life, whether or not we recognize it, we experience God through Jesus Christ because He is the Lord of all creation.

Tragically some people leave the cradle of life without ever discovering its purpose—eternal life in heaven, the maturity of human life. Or, having discovered it, they reject it and go into eternity totally unprepared—living and dying without ever knowing the eternal life for which they were created, wastefully discarding the enormous efforts of God in our behalf.

On the other hand, those who find the true meaning of life discover in this cradle experience a freshness and vitality that flows freely from the Life of Jesus. And when we leave this infancy of the temporal it is not really death (although we call it that) but a casting away of the shackles of our dependence on temporary physical life and a joyful acceptance of our promotion into the fullness of the abundant, eternal life for which we were created.

I'm Rick Blumenberg . . .and that's My View from Tanner Creek.

(This article was first published as a column in "Insights" in the Herald-Palladium newspaper, St Joseph, Michigan)