John Fischer The Catch

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. (Matthew 5:4)

A dear friend recently walked us out under the night sky and asked if we ever named the stars. “What do you mean?” we asked, and he went on to point out stars that he had named for people close to him who had died. It struck Marti and me as a good way to remember our loved ones, and in some cases, mourn their loss. It gives a focus to our pain. God told Abraham his descendants would be like the stars in the heavens; obviously, this is not a new thought.

After showing us specific stars that had meaning to him, he pointed at the three stars of Orion’s belt and announced they were the triplets he had lost in his first marriage – a loss from which the marriage never recovered. He mentioned how he still hadn’t received any closure from that devastating death of three babies at birth. So he has the night sky to help him deal with it. There is pain in this, but there is also comfort. There is comfort in knowing they are with the Lord, and at least as valuable to Him as those stars. Those who mourn will be comforted.

We’ve had three miscarriages, and though we have named them, we haven’t given them stars. That’s a new idea. It’s a permanent reminder of a grief that is easy to forget. The verse doesn’t say, “Blessed are those who forget,” it says, “Blessed are those who mourn.”

It’s especially easy to forget babies without names – the results of miscarriages and abortions. The numbers of women who have had abortions is the same in and outside the church, which would lead you to assume that a lot of men and women, especially inside the church, have not had any closure over this. How many men and women are silently suffering losses they cannot talk about in light of the huge anti-abortion bias of many churches? This is a big tragedy, because church is the one place we should be receiving forgiveness and comfort, and yet in many churches it’s the one thing you can’t reveal.

And it’s important, as I have done here, to include women and men because, as we all know, it takes two to tango. Why is the woman so often the only one we talk about with abortion issues? Men are just as responsible for all those unnamed babies. Men just have an easier time compartmentalizing uncomfortable things away. That’s why they may need this exercise the most.

I suggest we all – men and women – walk out under the night sky tonight and start naming stars. Pick ones you can find easily so you can always turn to the sky and remember.

And then, be sure to mourn. This is the whole point, remember? Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. (Matthew 5:4)

Comforted. Comforted in their mourning. Meaning that if they don’t mourn, they won’t be comforted.

We’ve been spending some time with family members recalling, among other things, the funerals we’ve experienced together; and suddenly, in the middle of one of these remembrances I started laughing out loud — the bearer of a secret joke.

What if the dead person were able to move, ghostlike, in and around all the conversations surrounding his or her life — the fake comments, the lies, the sugar-coated clichés — and affect a reaction at their own memory in the real world? I suddenly saw something like the ghost of Christmas present in Scrooged, Bill Murray’s cinematic version of A Christmas Carol — the little pixie ghost with the tiny, high-pitched voice who tries to wake up the contemporary Scrooge character to the reality around him by slapping him in the face or hitting him upside the head with a toaster.

Can’t you see it? We always say about the memorial service: “She would have loved this so much…” and Wham! comes the slap, Who cares what I like or don’t like? The service is for you, not for me!

We love to call funerals “Celebrations of Life.” Wham! another slap. Who’s celebrating? I’m the one who gets to celebrate! You are here to grieve. It’s my funeral, guys. I’m dead!

Or the husband who has just lost a wife he hasn’t been intimate with for 30 years and sadly remarks, “I’ve lost my companion.” Here comes the toaster! Oh really? Why don’t you tell them how excited you are to not have me kicking you around anymore?

Or, “Did you see her? They did such a good job.” Slap! They did not! That doesn’t look a thing like me! And why, with all the designer outfits I hid in my closet, did you put me in that awful Wal-Mart dress, for heaven’s sake? I hated that thing! Are you so embarrassed that everyone at church will think you actually spent some money on me? At least put me in the ground with some style.

We could go on and on here. You can write your own.

Just think about how we can carry on our rationalizations at the expense of a dead person. If Marti died today, I could tell you anything I wanted about her and you would have to believe it. I would most likely avoid telling you anything that would make me look bad. No, I would write all this flowery stuff about her, and secretly, toasters would fly.

Am I desecrating the memories of the dead here? On the contrary, I’m trying to desecrate the living to the end of telling the truth. Most of what we would be slapped upside the head over would be the result of not mourning. Not only mourning someone’s loss, but mourning what we could have had with that person had we overcome our barriers and rationalizations and the distances we let grow between us, because we simply don’t want to face into conflict.

It’s really simple: No grief, no comfort.

Of course the grace of Gods covers all this, but we experience that grace only to the extent that we realize our need for it. It’s the truth that sets us free. Lies only enslave us more.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. (Matthew 5:4)

My wife used to receive comfort regularly from her mother before she passed away a few years ago. That comfort consisted of a weekly phone call, and whenever Marti would share something difficult she was going through, Grandma Vi — as she came to be known by our children — would listen patiently and make her all-inclusive understanding comment, “I know, dear,” except that in her thick Maine accent, it always came out, “I know, dee-ah.”

As simple as it seems, it was comfort, still, and mysteriously touched Marti at a deep level, where just sharing her difficulty and having Grandma Vi understand what she was going through was all she needed to go on. She always finished these conversations with a lighter heart, and all Grandma Vi ever did was listen and say those magically reassuring words, “I know, dee-ah.”

Jesus is in the business of comforting those who mourn and even states that they are in a favored state. They are lucky; they are blessed; and because of that, they are comforted in their mourning.

Since when is sorrow a blessing? Since Jesus proclaimed it so. Well, if that’s the case, how come more of us are not experiencing that comfort? I would suggest that it might be because we are not really mourning.

We live in an escapist culture with so much to distract us. When we are hurting, we can always turn up the noise on the world around us, or we can try any number of “cures” our modern culture promises us, or we can blame or project the problem on someone else.

Marti and I have gone through a number of miscarriages, only one of which we actually grieved over, and that was because the doctor gave us permission to grieve. It was our assignment: we were to go home and grieve. It was amazing how much difference that made, having a professional giving us not only permission, but an assignment to mourn. And what a difference it made when we really did mourn, in sensing the Lord’s comfort like never before.

It’s only when we truly mourn that we can be comforted. There is no comfort in explaining away our sorrow. There is comfort in being sorrowful and throwing ourselves on the Lord.

So consider this Catch an assignment to mourn. Bring your sorrow to the Lord and let Him be there with you. He wants to comfort you Himself, for that is what this comfort is. It’s not some abstract emotion, or a warm, fuzzy blanket, it is purely and simply God Himself touching you, and letting you know in the midst of that which makes you mourn, as clearly as Marti used to hear it from Grandma Vi, “I know, dee-ah.” And somehow, that is enough.