The world is a heart-breaking place.
Friday, not too long ago, a homeless man walked into the church and asked to speak to a pastor. My assistant asked if I had a few minutes for him. I was busy but told her I’d give him ten minutes. Usually, such people are satisfied with prayer and a bag of food, but this man was different. Fifty-years-old, heavily tattooed, and rough looking, he was a crack addict but had resolved that day to get clean. He was poor, unemployed, and living in his car. He had family, but they were no longer willing to help him. And he was ashamed. I called drug rehab centers for half an hour, but for a variety of reasons, no one could take him. He left my office visibly defeated.
After a recent Sunday school class, an older gentleman approached me with tears in his eyes. He had been on vacation earlier this year, pulling a twenty-one foot trailer behind his vehicle. Gusty winds torqued the trailer on its side, flipping his vehicle over in the process. The accident killed his wife of fifty years. Alone and grieving, he asked me what God now wanted him to do with his life.
At a staff meeting a few weeks back, a colleague was asked what ministry he was most passionate about. Tears welling up, voice catching, he responded “missions.” Why? Because the world has great needs and American Christians have great resources, but they don’t deploy the resources to meet the needs.
A lifetime of bad choices. A tragic accident. A needy world. This planet is a heart-breaking place.
What is God doing about it?
The second beatitude answers the question: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” It is the most starkly ironic beatitude from Jesus’ lips. Happy are the unhappy? Yes, for God blesses those who in their utter despondency turn to him as their only hope. Just as the first beatitude—“Blessed are the poor in spirit”—draws its inspiration from Isaiah 61, so does this one. Prophesying the nature of Jesus’ ministry, Isaiah 61.1–3 says, “The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me…to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion—to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.”
The world is a heart-breaking place. Our Heavenly Father is a heart-mending God. Are we willing to show the world the way to him?
I began this devotional with three men in tears because they have taught me a valuable lesson. In the words of C. S. Lewis wrote, “To love at all is to be vulnerable.”[i] Do we cry enough over God’s broken world? Do we love it as he does? Do we even care? If we do not mourn alongside the mourning, how can we expect to be blessed among the comforted?
[i] C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1991), 121.
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