Christ's View of Sadness and Comfort

"Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted."

People ask why God allows sorrow in the world. Here Christ gives us at least part of the secret. Again, the lesson is not as simple as it looks at first. At first glance, the message seems to be that sorrow is temporary, and that, one day, God will take away our tears.

The word that we translate as "comfort" is parakaleo. This verb primarily means will be called (kaleo) towards the caller (para), that is, "will be summoned. So, when we suffer, we will be summoned God. More general, parakaleo means that we are being told something. The message can be comforting to us, but it can also be teaching us , begging us, or encouraging us.

Again, Christ meant all these ideas at once. When we mourn, it is because we have lost someone that we love. In that loss, we should see our own future. It is a foreshadowing of our own future summoning when we will be called to join God. This call is at once comforting because death is not final, a lesson about our future, a entreaty to change, and encouragement to persevere.