Jesus once said Blessed are those who grieve and mourn. Whether we like it or not – we all go through tough times – and the last thing we feel is that we’re blessed. What an odd thing for Him to say.  What did He mean by that?

We all have hopes and dreams, don't we? We want to have a great childhood, a good education, a good job, a career, great husband or wife, wonderful children to grow up and marry nice people. Basically, even though we have different desires, we want to have a long and happy life. But life's not always like that. Most of us experience losses in our lives, the death of a loved one, the regret of lost years, shattered dreams, and loss is inevitably followed by a process of grieving and mourning.

How do we deal with that? How do we get through that in a positive way so that we're not left with bitterness and hurt, but, in fact, we've benefited, we've grown? Have you ever noticed how that it's the tough times in life when we grow? How exactly do we do that?

It's natural to want the best out of life. We all do. I think back to when I was in high school and the dreams that I had for my life. They are probably the same ones that you had for your life. We want to be successful. We want to get the most out of life. There's nothing wrong with wanting that. But each one of us in our lives experiences a handful of major losses. And those losses result in a process of grief and mourning.

Sometimes it's the death of a loved one, the death of a husband or wife, the death of a child (I mean burying your own child must be the most awful experience, but people go through that), the death of a close friend. Sometimes it's divorce. Sometimes it's unfaithfulness in marriage or the breakdown of other relationships. Or maybe we get retrenched from our jobs, and particularly for men, where a lot of our self-worth can be wrapped up in our jobs, our careers, and our prospects. Life can be going along swimmingly well, and then all of a sudden without any notice, the tsunami hits.

On the twenty-seventh of December, 2004, I'm sure you've seen some of the footage on television; there are pictures of people on beaches, ideal beaches, sand and sun and surf and palm trees and five-star hotels just behind the beaches. And all of a sudden I look around and this huge wave, no sound, no bang, no crash, just death and devastation.

I was talking to a friend of mine just recently who was in one of the devastated areas in Banda Arceh Province, in Indonesia just after this happened, and he said you just cannot imagine the death and devastation. He was making the point that the psychological trauma of losing a quarter or a half of the population of this town will go on for generations. It's awful, but it's life.

As well as those handful of major losses in life, we go through lots of small disappointments along the way, don't we? People disappoint us or hurt us. Maybe our wives or our husbands aren't always exactly what we want them to be. And so we go through little bits of grief through life, and if we're not careful that grief, well, it can overwhelm us. It can drown us; it can completely consume our lives.

What happens when we go through grief? Those plans, those hopes and dreams, those beautiful pictures that we had in our heads and our hearts of what we wanted life to be, the good pictures, we end up being robbed of those. We have this sense that that's what I wanted to happen, but now it's not going to happen, and sometimes it's completely out of our control, like the tsunami. Other times, it's a consequence of our own foolish behaviour.

If you cheat on your wife, your marriage is going to fall apart, chances are. If you do wrong things, we are going to live out the consequences. Whether it's in our control or out of our control, there is one bottom line. Once it's happened, we can't turn the clock back. We can't change it. We can't try it again, it's gone. And for some people, regret sets in. Mourning turns into bitterness over the lost dreams, and so we mourn the loss large or small.

I look back to the time in my life, the biggest time of loss and grief that I experienced. The hardest thing for me of all, the hardest thing was the shattered dreams. When my first marriage fell apart, I had these hopes and dreams that could no longer be fulfilled. And the biggest need that I had, and I believe the biggest need that we all have is for someone to comfort us through those times, to put their arms around us.\But you know something, God in my situation sent a whole bunch of great people, I mean wonderful people. But in that dark period of time, they really couldn't make a difference. The hole for me was so black, so deep, so alone, that nothing anybody said, nothing anybody did actually made a difference. Jesus then comes along and says this:

Blessed are they who mourn for they will be comforted.

Now you think if people can't make a difference, if you've been in a place of real loss, you know what I mean, and sadly, we all have some of those things ahead of us in life too. If people can't make that much of a difference, who is it that's going to comfort us?

Elsewhere in John's Gospel, Jesus says to the disciples just before He goes to get crucified, He says you know something; It's good for you that I'm going away. I know you're scared, but it's good for you. You know why, because when I go, my Father in heaven will send you another Comforter, just like me. This is the promised Holy Spirit.

When I was in that dark hole, I met this Jesus through His Holy Spirit. I remember sitting at the dinner table night after night on my own. On the one hand, it was a gut wrenching experience, but on the other hand, Jesus was there. And it was in that dark space that I for myself was able to taste and see that the Lord was good. I was able to meet Jesus when there's nothing or nobody to hope in, when there's nothing left, when the pain just hurts so much, that's the place that Jesus is in.

Blessed are they who mourn for they will be comforted.

Isn't that a wonderful statement? God Himself comes to comfort each one of us. People are wonderful, but they can't reach deep into our pain the way that God can. The widow who has lost her husband, there's the funeral, there's family around, but in a few weeks they go away. And every night she goes to bed and lies in that bed on her own where her husband used to be lying next to her.

The husband whose wife leaves him for another man, there might be few people around but eventually he goes to bed on his own. Only God can heal us of our pain. And the promise of Jesus Christ is that when we mourn, if we come to Him, He will bless us in a gentle, beautiful way. In a way that nobody else on this planet can touch us and love us and bless us.

Perhaps you're going through a time of grief or loss now. Maybe you know someone who is going through a time of grief or loss. This is wonderful news. This is news about a God who loves us. This is news about a Jesus who knows what it is to suffer, who knows what it is to loose, and He says, All of Me, all of God, the God that Created the heaven and the earth and everything in it, this God will be in the darkness of our pain with us.

If one day you are going through a time of mourning, my prayer for you is that the Holy Spirit will bring this to your memory, will bring the good news of Jesus Christ to you.

Blessed are they who mourn, for they will be comforted.