That title sounds like a contradiction to me. Joy and grief are total opposites. I do not know about you, but every time I have been sad, I have not been happy. That would be my first reaction to the words:
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”
Matthew 5:4
Perhaps then, it is only a contradiction because we are thinking about the nature of grief wrong. Everything within us despises sorrow, but here it seems that Christ is welcoming it as a subject would herald the arrival of a king. Except that is exactly what happened. It was welcomed as a King. He was welcomed as the King of Sorrow, the Man of Sorrow. We often picture Christ as the Majesty of the celestial mountaintops, but do not forget that He is also Lord of the dark valleys as well, for there is no foreign country His foot has not tread upon, even those depths of the Valley of the Shadow of Death where all sorrow dwells.
Come, let us reverently consider our Savior’s Passion by His grace. I would recommend you stop reading and ask the Lord for grace to accompany Him to this valley that we know as Calvary. Like really…stop reading for a moment and pray for the Lord to encounter you, for we are about to tread on Holy Ground that needs not be overlooked swiftly and lightly. Do not ignore this, He is much greater than my words will ever be.
Do you ever remember a moment where your heart felt heavy? Like it was one hundred pounds too heavy for your chest to uphold? Like it was filled to the brim with tumult and grief, sinking quickly in a sea of sorrow? The sorrow of loneliness. The sorrow of failure. The sorrow of hopelessness. The sorrow of a crumbling world bearing down on you. Oh, that is but the sorrow of just one person. Who could bear the sorrow of ten souls? How heavy a heart would that be? What of a thousand? What of all mankind? Unbearable.
That was the burden of the Heart of Jesus, that Man of Sorrow identified with the insurmountable chains of grief that He submitted Himself to because it was His joy to do it. So, step by step Christ carried that burden with joy. The immense weight of the summation of every human sorrow He bore with trembling knees, a marred and beaten body, and eyes that looked on you from eternity past with love and saw everything you have ever done and said “You are worth all of human suffering if it meant I was to have a Heaven with you!”
This is called the Great Exchange. The great exchange of our own sorrow and grief for His joy through the power of the Holy Spirit won by the Victory at Christ’s Cross. Therefore, the Holy Spirit through Christ was sent to dwell in our hearts for this purpose.
“The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me…to comfort all who mourn, to console those who mourn in Zion. To give them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.”
Isaiah 61:1a-3b
That is why every moment of human mourning is now an opportunity for Christ the Conqueror to display the joy of His presence in our lives through His Holy Spirit. Indeed, we are blessed when we are faced with just an infinitely minute fraction of what Christ suffered because He is our Comforter that will never leave or forsake us. He shall use every moment of grief to apply Himself as the Joy. I would indeed call that Good News, happy news that should refresh our souls with that oil of joy given in exchange for our mourning at the Cross. He intends this for all His people to live in this reality, constantly connected to the reality of His Joy.
