DAY THREE: Happy Are the Sad

Pain sends us into our purpose. Out of a broken heart, we cry out to God and his comforting grace moves us to be comforters.

First-century Second Temple Jewish people had much to mourn. Rome was brutal toward the Jews, and many in the Jewish elite religious class were brutal to Jews of the lower social status.

The sinners, the chronically sick, and the tax collectors were considered unclean by the Jewish religious establishment; thus, they were forbidden to participate in Jewish religious life. Jesus comforted the rejected ones and those who mourned. It was unheard of for a rabbi to share a meal with the unclean, but Jesus was a different kind of rabbi. He is the Messiah. He does not have to preserve his cleanness from the unclean; he makes the unclean clean.

Sadly, many of the Jewish religious leaders were infested with sin-sickness, and their homemade remedies of religiosity only made them more hostile toward Jesus. Many of the Pharisees and Sadducees, two leading Jewish religious groups, were known for their religious sacrifice, but not known for giving mercy to the sinner, the sick, and the outcast. Jesus mourned over Jerusalem and their rejection of him:

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her. How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! See, your house is left to you desolate. For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord’!” (Matt.23:37–39)

Jesus lamented how the Pharisees and Sadducees were hypocrites who “shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces,” preventing their entry (Matt. 23:13). He lamented how the dark power had corrupted those who were to lead the people into God’s kingdom, and that they were themselves “whitewashed tombs,” a brood of vipers, full of greed, and self-indulgence (Matt. 23:15–33). Jesus yearned to gather the Jewish people under his wings, but like the prophets of old, he was rejected, and ultimately nailed to a cross.

In the Old Testament, one of the metaphors for God is that he is an eagle hovering above his children and protecting them under his wings. The Great Eagle himself had landed; he was among them, but they shooed him away:

He watches over his nest like an eagle and hovers over his young; he spreads his wings, catches him, and carries him on his feathers. (Deut. 32:11)

How priceless your faithful love is, God! People take refuge in the shadow of your wings. (Ps. 36:7)

Jesus lamented the state of things as they were. He was the happiest person to ever live, yet he was still called “a man of sorrows” (Isa. 53:3 NLT).

Lament was not absent from Jesus’ life. He can relate to us in every way.

READ Psalm 34:18.

Does this verse bring you any comfort? How have you felt God’s presence in the midst of pain?

PRAY

Blessed Trinity, You enter our worst moments and teach us how to lament and long for a day when all wrongs are made right, when tears of sorrow turn to tears of joy, when hurts are healed. Teach me to lament well. Teach me to cry out to you. In Jesus’ name, amen.