The prospect of death makes one more mature and self-aware, illuminating the meaning of Ecclesiastes 7:2-4 that it is better to go to the house of mourning.

Blessedness and mourning seem contradictory, but obviously Jesus saw spiritual benefits to sorrow. True, godly mourning gets high marks from God.

Worldly sorrow leads to death while godly sorrow leads to repentance and life. After godly repentance, sorrow is swallowed up in profound joy.

The practice of rending clothes symbolizes sorrow, agony, despair, and hopelessness, a realization that God alone can restore the profound loss.

Meekness is often confused with weakness and considered to be undesirable. But Jesus lists it as a primary virtue of one who will inherit His Kingdom.

Matthew's encapsulation of the Beatitudes, the essence of Jesus Christ's teaching, contains the foundation of His teaching through the entirety of His ministry.

Personified Jerusalem, whom God depicts as a grieving widow, blames others for her troubles while overlooking her own sins as the real cause of her sorrow.

Ecclesiastes 7:1-4 highlight the Bible's attitude toward death, particularly its insistence that we allow the reality of death to change our approach to life.

Why did God allow this tragedy? Why do the good suffer and the evil prosper? We want answers to these questions, but Jesus points us in another direction.

In Lamentations 3, the narrator finally convinces Lady Jerusalem that her own sins have caused her necessary punishment and affliction by God.

Jesus anticipated what was coming on the nation, prepared for it as well as He could, and persevered through it along with the rest of His fellow citizens.

In the Beatitudes in Matthew 5, Jesus exposes the depths of His own heart, while demonstrating the deficit of our own carnal hearts.

When Joel describes the devastating locust plagues, instead of promising a silver lining on a very black cloud, he says things are going to get intensely worse.

Physical hunger and thirst provide important types of the desire one must cultivate for spiritual resources, realizing that man cannot live by bread alone.

The expressions of sorrow in the Psalms far outnumber expressions of praise, indicating that the Hebrew culture has almost made the lamentation an art form.

We accept most of our opinions, prejudices, and beliefs unconsciously. We must scrutinize our own beliefs through the principles of God's Holy Scriptures.

The word 'blessed' in the Beatitudes means happy from within, not dependent on circumstances. It comes from having God's spirit and hope for the future.

Putting on a spiritual garment of sackcloth in mourning is necessary in humbling ourselves as a part of the process in examining and scrutinizing our lives.

God wants His people to have an emotional yet entirely rational response—to sigh and cry—to the lawlessness and idolatry round them in the world.

In the matter of godly standards for dress, we must adopt the humble, childlike, sincere, unassuming, and teachable attitude, loving God intimately.