SO SAD... mT 5:4 "Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

Matthew 6:16-18 "And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.(17)But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face,(18)that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

Why mourn? It is good to mourn because life is sad. That's why. 

The weekly story (again) is creation is good but the creation separated from God is not good (it's fallen; rotten). So life is this crazy queasiness of going from exhilaration to nausea and staggering through numb phases in between (for most everyone). I hear there are people who maintain their health, their finances, their relationships, their accomplishments, their spirituality etc. such that they are always soaring like eagles; always. I've also heard of Yetis.

The Bible records life in good ways, but it includes sad, sad, sad stuff. Genesis: God made everything oh so good, including man, but then it is sad. Man is alone (which makes him lonely (which is sad) (which is not good)). Then there is the fall of humanity to the deceit of the spiritually already fallen serpent. We don't have the details of the serpent's story, but apparently it had already gone sad (he is bent on warring with the only self-existent omni-everything being; how sad). Humanity falls, turns against one another, work gets hard, relationships messy, kids fighting with one another, and so on. That's just the genesis of sadness. It cranks up to ultra sad in Jeremiah's lament for besieged Jerusalem:

Lamentations 2:11 My eyes are spent with weeping; my stomach churns; my bile is poured out to the ground because of the destruction of the daughter of my people, because infants and babies faint in the streets of the city.

Lamentations 4:10 The hands of compassionate women have boiled their own children; they became their food during the destruction of the daughter of my people.

That's sad.

And, no disrespect to Jabez (hard to be disrespectful in that there is practically nothing known about him except he was ambitious) but how about THE PRAYER OF JOB:

Job 30:19-31 God has cast me into the mire, and I have become like dust and ashes. (20) I cry to you for help and you do not answer me; I stand, and you only look at me. (21) You have turned cruel to me; with the might of your hand you persecute me. (22) You lift me up on the wind; you make me ride on it, and you toss me about in the roar of the storm. (23) For I know that you will bring me to death and to the house appointed for all living. (24) "Yet does not one in a heap of ruins stretch out his hand, and in his disaster cry for help? (25) Did not I weep for him whose day was hard? Was not my soul grieved for the needy? (26) But when I hoped for good, evil came, and when I waited for light, darkness came. (27) My inward parts are in turmoil and never still; days of affliction come to meet me. (28) I go about darkened, but not by the sun; I stand up in the assembly and cry for help. (29) I am a brother of jackals and a companion of ostriches.(30) My skin turns black and falls from me, and my bones burn with heat. (31) My lyre is turned to mourning, and my pipe to the voice of those who weep.

That's pretty sad, huh?

What about Jesus and sadness?

Isaiah 53:3-4 He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. (4) Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.

John 11:35 Jesus wept.

 (he was sad)

So where's the blessing? It is in hope. Evil is real and IF…. Again… IF we deal with the pain and sorrow in our hearts and in this world by going to God we can find real comfort (instead of delusion or just being medicated).

Grieve, not for show, but because the desire for unhindered goodness in me and around me isn't there like it should be. Oh God, I'm so sad. Bless me with your comfort I pray.