to mourn is to sing.

A simple research paper and a little life has begun a revolution in the way I think about a passage of Scripture. The paper I refer to was on Jewish funeral and burial customs in the New Testament world. I won't go into a lot of detail, you can always read the paper :)

In Jewish culture mourning was overt. It was no holds barred. You were expected to look and act and speak like someone in mourning. In fact, culture mandated that you participate in active mourning by such things as restraining from certain social events, entering through a particular temple gate, and dressing in a certain manner. Everyone knew your world had been turned upside down and your heart was breaking, and they were expected to treat you accordingly. What's more, it was in your hands. Those who would offer comfort and condolences to a grieving person were forbidden to speak to the bereaved until they first spoke. (it makes sense why Job's friends did not speak for so long. And it makes even more sense why they should have continued to keep their mouths shut.) Interestingly enough though, after a year of overt grieving broken into a step down process from more intense levels of grief to the less intense, the season of mourning was concluded with a ceremony, and a lifestyle of mourning was no longer permitted. ("For everything there is a season...a time to mourn, and a time to laugh.")

All of this to say, mourning is necessary, and even wonderful. "Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted." To admit heartbreak was to open oneself up to comfort and facilitate healing. To be forced, in a sense, by the cultural norms to continue mourning for a defined season was to be refused the ability to hide from or suppress the hurt and instead to find a way to work through it, with the help of the community.

There is so much that each of us face that is cause for mourning. Drinking the cup of sorrow to the last drop (to paraphrase Henry Nouwen) is the only way to be able to taste fully the cup of joy.

I could regale you with the number of things that have happened in my personal life, family, church family, and in the world that touches me that have been causes for heartbreak in my life over the past few months. I have felt so many times as though I was in mourning, literally and spiritually, sometimes to the point of physical sickness. Some of this is the nature of existence in this world. Some of it is the Enemy's way of battering my soul and trying to discouraging me and make me abandon the path I am on.

But dear ones, we must take comfort in the fact that we are mourning, for we are recognizing and admitting that all is not well in this world, and that there is nothing we can do to raise what is dead back to life. But we know the One who can, who has, and who does. He longs to bring us comfort, but he cannot bring comfort where there is no embracing of pain.