Weeping and Laughing

DEVOTION

THE GOSPEL OF LUKE

WEEPING AND LAUGHING

Luke 6:20-22

20 Looking at his disciples, he said: "Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. 21 Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. 22 Blessed are you when men hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man.

NIV

As we now examine being blessed because we weep for we will laugh, we cannot help to compare that in some sense to being poor in Spirit and having the kingdom. Although that deals with the spiritual aspect of life, this weeping seems to deal with more of the intellectual aspect of life. When we take the time to consider life itself, and it’s temporal state which concludes with death, if we have no hope of eternal life, the hereafter, we should in fact weep, mourn or lament, for there then is no purpose for our life at all, other than to simply try to satisfy our own desires for a brief moment. But if we do in fact lament over the fact we are lost, then we will, not spiritually at first, but intellectually decide to follow Jesus and we will laugh, or as Matthew says, be comforted. Someone who is dead in their sin, dead in their spirit cannot make a spiritual choice but they must see the end of their life intellectually and understand it ends with nothing, this should cause anyone to mourn, to weep, to lament. How good does life get when we come to that realization? We can laugh, we are comforted by the fact Jesus will come back for us and take us to where he is. Life just doesn’t get any better than that. Knowing this and combining this fact with all the rest of scripture, especially about not worrying about this life, what we will wear, eat, or whatever, we can have a whole different perspective on all the happenings within our daily life. Once we were weeping over life, but that was before meeting Jesus, now being comforted. What can life bring us that will stop us from this comfort? Nothing! What can life do to destroy our laughter? Nothing!  Some may remember a saying about the wealthy, laughter all the way to the bank, but we can laugh all the way to heaven.