A series - Bible Quotes from The Pizza Place Providence #2
Matthew 5:4 — “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”
This verse is at the end of the caravan chapter because I couldn’t think of a more honest or fitting place to put it.
The night before, Mom had been up late watching Lee Evans on her iPad; a few hours later she was gone. That is the bit I still can’t get my head around: somebody can be laughing at Lee Evans until two in the morning, get into bed and by breakfast, the family are standing around a caravan trying to understand a world that has shattered beyond recognition.
There were phones going off, people arriving, Dad outside in pieces and all these practical questions floating about that seemed completely detached from what had actually happened. My Mom had died! Shouldn’t the sky split open, the world collectively pause for a bit or some siren play across the country to warn everyone to tiptoe with respect? At one point, I saw a bloke dragging his fishing gear across the grass towards the lake. I vividly remember thinking it was almost rude that he could just carry on with his day, while our world had been smashed apart.
Of course, he didn’t know Mom. He didn’t know any of us. To him, it was just another morning by the water.
That somehow made it worse.
“Blessed are those who mourn” I didn’t have the pleasure of knowing the Gospel that tragic morning, so it’s not exactly a verse I would have wanted somebody to wheel out in some woeful attempt to comfort me, as my kids shattered before my eyes as their Nan was carried away to some unknown morgue. I would probably have thought, lovely, cheers mate! My mom has just died and now I’m apparently blessed. Have a word with yourself!
Yet I keep coming back to it.
Jesus doen’t try to talk grief out of being grief. He doesn’t offer some neat little answer that turns death into a lesson. The comfort He promises has taken longer than I would have liked to reach me and it hasn’t not arrived in a way that suddenly makes any of what happened that day acceptable.
The sudden and brutal grief that obliterated our world that morning did real damage. Trying to make that sound holy would feel dishonest and disrespectful to my Mom. Her death was disgustingly unexpected; it tore through the life I understood and left parts of me exposed that I’d spent years covering over.
Eventually, cracks appeared in the wreckage. The jokes, distractions and certainty that I’d got life broadly figured out suddenly had very little to say for themselves. Questions I’d kept locked away for years started forcing their way in.
Somehow, God worked through those cracks and found his initially reluctant disciple.
I still can’t tell you why Mom died in that caravan after laughing at Lee Evans until two in the morning. I can’t make that day fit into a tidy Christian explanation - no matter how much Bible I read - and I still picture the fishing bloke by the lake as though he’d wandered into the wrong scene. I’m nowhere near as irrationally angry at him these days though.
Matthew 5:4 has become true for me anyway. Comfort took its time. It came gradually, through the damage grief had caused, until I realised God had found me in the middle of it. He’s been working through those broken places ever since.
