"Blessed are they that mourn." ELIZABETH EARL JONES, CSB          The second beatitude reads, "Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted." Once when a sense of sadness knocked loudly at the door, there came also the query, What could Jesus have thought was "blessed" about mourning? The answer quickly unfolded, as answers do when we reason things out with God, for need and supply, spiritually understood, cannot he separated, — they are forever the two that are one. It was then seen that the blessed thing about mourning is this, it is itself a dawning conviction of the utter insufficiency of things finite, and this conviction causes one to look higher, to seek satisfaction in the permanent facts of being, thus finding in the infinite ocean of Truth and Love all for which we sought in vain in the material realm. The spiritual facts of being richly supply comfort, peace, permanence, home, and, above all, an all-satisfying companionship with God.          The promise to those that mourn is that "they shall be comforted." What is the essential comforter in their case? Is it not a consciousness that the all-sufficiency of the infinite overrules the insufficiency of the finite? Then blessed indeed are they who are turning from empty dreams to drink deep of the living waters which ever pour from the omnipresent Comforter. It is needless to add that the temptation to grieve was quickly healed and that a higher sense of joy filled the empty corner of mortal mind. In these moments of sweet communion with God, these quiet times of reasoning together, one receives such tender enlightenment and such helpful, practical instruction that in rapture we exclaim with the apostle Paul, "O the depth of the riches both of thee wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!"          Divine Mind is perpetually instructing His idea, — the child of divinity, — but mortals are generally so busy running to and fro in a material sense of life and its activities that they are tempted to neglect the privilege of reasoning with God concerning the duties of each day; hence the occasion for sorrow. In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" our dear Leader has blazed the way to self-knowledge and a demonstrable understanding of divine Love, so vast and absorbing that we understand the import of Jesus' parable of the man who found a treasure hid in a field, and when he had found it, he went and sold all that he had and bought that field. Multitudes are now hearing the clarion call of Truth in Christian Science and responding to it, as it calls humanity out of its sorrow, sin, sickness, and death into "the glorious liberty of the children of God."          In Science and Health (p. 481) we read, "Man is tributary to God, Spirit, and to nothing else." As the rivers are tributary to the ocean, flowing from near and far to empty all their activities into the great mother of waters, which in turn sends back the waters, purified and rarefied, through the heavens, replenishing and renewing the rivers with showers of abundance and refreshment, so also are we tributary to God, Spirit; not to matter, to self, or to mortal man. Hitherto our time, activities, thoughts, and desires were oftentimes flowing toward things which do not profit, sapping our strength, health, joy, and courage, and cheating our hopes, therefore we mourned; but in Christian Science we are learning where our activities and affections belong, and are allowing all that we are and hope to be to flow naturally toward God . . . thereby daily reaping for ourselves and others rich and abundant harvests of blessings, renewing, rejuvenating, comforting.   "'Blessed are they that mourn.'" by Elizabeth Earl Jones, CSB Christian Science Sentinel, 1909

 

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