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Broken and the Blessed Week 2, Day 1

by David Joynt on January 15, 2017


DAY 8

MATTHEW 5:4

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”

 

Nothing captures the brokenness of life like mourning. Reductionists have always made life simple, maximize pleasure and avoid pain. If this were a worthy life goal, then mourning and loss should be eliminated wherever possible, and minimized whenever necessary. Yet imagine a life without mourning. It would be a life where we felt no empathy for another’s suffering and refused to enter into their sorrow. It would be a life where the tragedies of the world did not move us and our own mistakes evoked no contrition. In other words, it would be a disconnected and detached life, in which we were strangers to the heart of God.

 

What makes you sad in your own life?

 

FAMILY TIME—

Find a Psalm of Lament and read it with your family.

 

Tags: beatitudes, comfort, devotional, the broken and the blessed

About the Author
David Joynt

Dave Joynt began his service as a pastor at Valley Presbyterian Church in Paradise Valley, Arizona in September 2014. This meant a move away from the Northeast, where he has a long history, growing up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and then serving congregations in Delaware and New Jersey for a total of 23 years.

Dave was nurtured in a great church in Bethlehem where his parents, Anne and Carey, served as elders. He graduated in classics from Lehigh University where his Father taught, and then from Oxford, where he met his wife Julia. Ordained in 1988, he completed a Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1993.

He and Julia have a son, Tristan, and a daughter, Madeleine.

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