A few days after a person walks out of the ramshackle houses of the third world with kisses on their cheeks and singing in their ears. After they ride that big metal bird back to the first world. After they hug the kids, get a good night’s sleep in a bed that’s shaped to their backside. After they reunite with their favorite caffeine delivery system. A few days after they come home, the mourning often begins.
There’s a reason Jesus blessed the mourners immediately after he blessed the poor in spirit. After we’re brought to the end of our rope, once we let go and fall to our knees dependent, the first breath we take as beggars in the kingdom of God is exhaled as a groan.
We mourn. For reasons we’re not certain we know.
Is it guilt over a hot shower? A refrigerator full of food?
Is it longing for acquaintances across the miles to move in next door?
Is it shame at what we call enough or anger that less isn’t worth more to us and everyone we’ve ever known?
What sends tears down the cheeks of a brand new beggar?
Blessed are those who mourn because they will be comforted.
The word Jesus speaks in the Greek translation of this beatitude is the strongest word for grief in the language. It’s used in the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Old Testament, to describe Jacob’s sadness when he thought his son Joseph had been killed (Genesis 37:34). It is uncontrollable uncontainable grief, the kind that grabs a person entirely and can’t be hidden.
Mourning like this is evidence of a heart made of flesh and not stone, of a Spirit that wriggles inside us, a God who cares enough to wrestle and dislocate our joints, leaving us marked, pulling us weeping and wailing but mostly willing to the edges – to obey the law of love now etched on our hearts by God’s finger and hugs and vultures, the stench of the slums and the hallelujahs of hope living in the laughter bounced off church walls (Ezekiel 26:27).
Painfully blessed.
The mourners are blessed because there is comfort in having received a little more of Christ’s likeness – even if it is His sorrow. He stood outside the city gates and wept over lies believed and hearts locked tight. He shed tears for an uncle dead and buried for days and for a cousin beheaded by a sex-sick king. He saw the hungry multitude and had compassion on them – literally, He “suffered with” them. He was a “man of sorrows” and now, like Him, the mourners grieve over what grieves the Author of joy.
And the mourner grieves the dying of who they once were while they slowly become who they will be. The mourner kneels on the eve of a new kind of life and, like Jesus, asks the Father if there is any other way into it besides drinking this cup and walking this hill. Do I really have to pour out the American Dream and instead swallow the self-sacrifice and uncertainty you’re serving?
And the mourner mourns this reluctance in her.
She’s stuck, for a moment, in a kind of strange sadness that leaves everyday life feeling trite. She feels along the sides of her life for something certain, she gropes for sure footing, reaches for anything familiar but it isn’t there. Not at the moment.
Here’s exactly what’s happened to the beggar who now cries in her shower just days after coming home from Guatemala. She’s gone blind.
Temporarily.
For me – for years – God had a third world address. He moved there after I went to El Salvador in 2005. And for years afterward I got on planes to meet Him and missed Him when I came back to the cul-de-sac again. Against the backdrop of the darkest poverty and out-in-the-open evil, His light and love was clearly visible. My spiritual eyes adjusted to the brilliance of His compassion streaming from every church and every servant I met in Uganda, Ethiopia, India, the Dominican Republic…
But back home I couldn’t see a thing in these muddled middle tones.
My eyes weren’t accustomed to the muted colors here and I had a hard time spotting God in this place. But over time I did relearn to notice His miracles in North America too, better than ever before. I found Him in a food pantry on Wednesdays and at a shelter downtown, in a Sunday school class sitting cross legged with second and third graders. I squinted until I could pick Him out in a crowd at a concert, on a rental car shuttle, on a swing in my own backyard, in checks written and sermons preached and music sung and walks in the woods and friends in lawn chairs.
This is part of the great holding-together comfort mourners have been promised. The blind receive sight. Eventually.
Comfort. Not an eschatological comfort – though one day the hands that wiped our hearts clean of sin will wipe our cheeks clean of tears too. No, this isn’t a someday hold-on-until-then utopia but a here-and-now all-out deliverance.
Mourners in search of significance, contentment, any trace of God’s footprints around the house, will find a new normal. They will be comforted. Little by little.
They will not be comfortable, however. By God’s grace they’ll never be fully at home in the middle again. Truth is they never really were – but now they know it. And they can’t un-know it.
But they will be blessed to know the Comforter, maybe even in ways they’ve only read about in the biographies of saints. They’ll know Him in deep down places inside where they never knew they even had places.
How does the comfort come? It’s different for everyone I suppose. It depends on the dimensions of that cavern your groans pour out of I think. For me, I’ve found the most comfort in those basics every youth minister tries to make us practice, the ones we all arrogantly think we’ve outgrown from time to time: reading the bible, meditating on it, praying, confessing, sitting in silence listening for the faintest whisper, praying some more. And comfort has come from relationships with other beggars who are also restless in the middle. And comfort has come from being obedient, the best I know how. And comfort has come from leading others into poverty – theirs and the world’s – and into a new kind of riches we discover together.
I continue to relearn how to hear God’s voice through the noise of kids and work and the internet. I continue to relearn how to see Him against the gray backdrop of American suburbia. I’ll never stop relearning. There’s comfort in that too.
But today I can say it’s truly good to be home. God is here in my new normal
I’m blessed.
Jill Foley says:
This is so good and just what I needed to hear. I’m still processing my trip with Compassion less than a month ago and this message is helpful to my mourning heart.
Thank you.
Tanya Robinson says:
What a blessing you have been given to be able to put into words those feelings! Thank you for sharing!
Doris says:
How do I say this andmake any sense? I haven’t even *gone* on one of these trips except through the eyes of those who are writing about it, and yet I mourn. The words, the pictures, the stories…so powerful…I cannot turn away from the faces…they haunt me now in a way I’ve never known before. I can’t imagine how much MORE one must feel this after having actually visited….
Candace says:
Thank you so much for this post, Shaun. While I haven’t traveled as much as you, and not with Compassion, I have been on mission trips for most of my life at least yearly…I am compelled, it is my heart. Yet, I come home and it’s like you say – I have a mixture of sadness, anger, questioning…and it comes and goes in cycles. I get very angry with the North American church…yet I know that anger is misplaced as well. I got back from Belize 2 weeks ago and am still in the grieving stage I think. I am so thankful to read this post – I know I’m not alone. And, your post actually helps me to not feel guilty about my feelings being ALL over the page. I’d love to read more of your tips that you give to your Compassion trippers on coming home and how to deal with it all.
God is good to remind me, through you, that my time with Him is what is most important right now…for me, half the battle is just getting myself to STOP dwelling on the negative/critical feelings I’m feeling. (just being real with ya!!)
thanks!! and God bless!
LaureAnn says:
That’s it.
The constant dull longing.
The sharp stab that brings unexpected tears.
The grief I can’t explain to anyone.
I’ve never traveled to the places you’ve been.
I’m so desperate to see Him where I live every day.
I’ve been praying for joy to return.
For significance and contentment exactly!
Maybe what I really need first is to be comforted.
Maybe I’m not crazy; just mourning.
Thank you for making some sense of it all.
Kandi says:
Wow. Such a moving post. I really appreciated it.
Jennie says:
Yes. I don’t know if this is something that has been your heart a long time or if it’s something new God has just given, but keep sharing it. Keep pointing mourners to the Truth that He is growing in us a heart like Christ’s. This helps. This points us in the right direction.
Amanda says:
Thank you for this.
Lisa-Jo says:
Yes, this is what I’ve been trying to put into words all week and couldn’t. Thank you. Thank you. It is such a relief to read it here.
Kelly @ Love Well says:
Speechless.
You’ve spread a banquet of blessings here, Shaun. Thank you.
Tiffany says:
Wow. This post is really hit home. Thank you.
boomama says:
I just read this post for a second time.
And this part brought tears to my eyes all over again:
They’ll know Him in deep down places inside where they never knew they even had places.
Thanks, Shaw-awn. Love your heart.
Shaun Groves says:
Mine’s better because of yours.
Thanks, friend.
Ann Voskamp says:
I’m with Boo Mama — I think this is my fifth read.
I am glad you shared it.
It was meant for this — to heal more.
It helped bind up my wounds and gently peel back my scales.
I am still groping — but I am finding.
Listening…
I may even sing in the shower tomorrow.
Shaun Groves says:
I’m with you, Ann. I’m praying you and the rest of the team through this momentary blindness. I’m believing that God is walking you to still waters and green pastures and comforting you along the way.
Sara says:
Exactly. I have struggled with the seeming triteness of life in America ever since I started traveling to the third world. Time spent in Peru, Kenya, and twice in Ecuador has made me question so many things back home. It is often hard to move past the stage of being lost and start to see God’s purpose and presence in life here. Thanks for the suggestions about how to do it.
Katie says:
I want to let all of you who went and who blogged, that through your generosity in sharing your hearts, God is giving many more of us the gift of more cracks in our hearts…cracks through which His love can flow.
I am scheduled to do the Compassion Sunday “presentation” at our church in two weeks, and God is using your trip to prepare me. I think that He is going to birth some wonderful things in our our own church through this, for I feel Him preparing my heart…whispering to me not to worry beforehand what I will say, for His Spirit is prepared and is going to speak through me, not to make people feel guilty and decide to sponsor a child, but to soften hearts to seek HIS heart for those around them…those lost in this disguised poverty that has invaded our nation.
I want you to know that you are not as alone as you might think you are. For just as God is using your trip to open your own eyes and those of us who have virtually traveled with you, so He is also using many other things to open the eyes of many of us who might, to the casual observer, not appear to be much different than others. For the person who lets God’s heart fill theirs does not advertise how God is using him…and it is only in getting to know the person truly that you begin to see the quiet ways that they live a life poured out…even here in America.
Can I encourage you all, when anger tries to come against you, to TRUST HIM with even this? Know that He is changing the heart of His church steadily and surely, in ways too numerous to count…placing His heart inside us…causing our heartbeats to slowly but surely become more aligned with His. His ways are mysterious and too numerous to count, but they are just, and true, and sure, and they always “open the eyes of our hearts, that we may know the HOPE of His calling…” His calling which is, of course, to live a life poured out as a sacrifice of praise and love, shared with a broken world.
How is it that our own hearts must be broken for His healing to flow to the broken world around us?
Cherish says:
Thanks so much for this post, Shaun.
My heart has been all over the place this week. I’ve read about you guys’ trips to Guatemala, and my heart has been taken back to what I experienced on a missions trip to Bolivia in 1994. And, I just kind of haven’t known what to do with it all. Your post has helped.
I have to say, also, that I have not known anything about Compassion until reading about this trip. Thanks for opening my eyes to this good work.
Christine says:
Thank you for sharing this! Much of what you’ve written has been on my mind and it has been a struggle to figure out how to make sense of it all in everyday life. But your words are profound – “having received a little more of Christ’s likeness – even if it is His sorrow.” His sorrow. That’s it! That is what I am carrying and what is so difficult to put into words and why, really, I shouldn’t expect my family and friends to fully understand. I really needed to read this…actually, I’ve read it again and again! And I think I will print it out as well! Thank you for taking the time to write it!
rhonda says:
Shaun, thank you for this. I have struggled with this, since returning from a trip from Odessa and also with anger at myself from slipping back into my “american” ways all to easily. no more. Thank you for going, for being a voice, for reminding me, for reopening those places in my heart that satan wanted gloss over….
Anna crane says:
Will print this so I can re-read and meditate on it for days to come. This is too wonderfully dense to be taken in in one reading. Thank you.
Gina Morgan says:
Thank you for this post. How I can relate! This mourning you speak of comes from true brokeness. A brokeness over the things that only the Spirit of God can reveal to us. Yes, we shed tears, groan, heave, labor, and end up transformed and dislocated. Changed forever. Broken and beautiful.
Dan King says:
Dang Shaun… I can totally relate. I was rocked like this when I came back from a trip to Kenya and Uganda last year. I couldn’t walk into a grocery store for a while without feeling guilty, sad, and disturbed.
I also just got back from a trip to Haiti, and I’m still feeling many of the same feelings. It’s good to know that I’m not alone in this, and I take comfort in knowing that I’ll NEVER be the same…
Ruth Ann says:
Hi Shawn! I have been reading your blog for a few months now and have so enjoyed reading about your trip to Guatemala. I love Ann’s blog as well so it was beautiful to witness two perspectives. Thanks for the work you’re doing for Compassion, for the Kingdom, and for the Body of Christ. I am so touched by your words and praying that your ministry (blogging, music –love the new song, by the way!, and missions) will continue to be so powerful and effective for Him. Blessings.
Beth Werner Lee says:
Thanks for writing this. I’m sitting here in my first reading going, “How does he know this? Where’d he get this wisdom?” and then I read on and understood.
Comfort in the midst of our suffering: when my mom was dying of breast cancer and I was visiting for the month of September 2006 and we went to evening church the youth pastor preached on that verse. He blew me away…that God comforts us in the midst of not after our suffering. And my heart tore right open but he had so many different people drop his comforts into that open wound… yeah, it’s still open. Thanks for one more comfort.
Grace and peace to you Shaun.
ali @ an ordinary mom says:
Powerfully written, from powerful experiences.
“Is it guilt over a hot shower? A refrigerator full of food?” I remember feeling and processing those very thoughts after each of my trips to Mexico in my teens.
“They will not be comfortable, however. By God’s grace they’ll never be fully at home in the middle again. Truth is they never really were – but now they know it. And they can’t un-know it.” At times I’ve been frustrated at not being able to unknow some of the hard truths, not being able to live in ignorant bliss, because bliss is so easy, kwim?
Kristy says:
Thanks so much for putting this into words for me.
Ann Voskamp says:
Do you know how many times I come back to read this one?