Cursing or Mourning?

As timing (God) would have it, the March 12 heading in my daily devotional was this: If you mourn the fallenness of your world rather than curse its difficulties, you know that grace has visited you. 

A few hours later, I learned that the Colorado High School Activities Association has cancelled all sporting events and music festivals until April 6. No track meets for my girl whose first meet was supposed to be Saturday. The one whose outlook in life is directly tied to how much athletic competition she's getting. No All State Band for my senior on April 4. It's her favorite event of the year. Our school's chili supper, which raises $10,000 a year for the band, was cancelled. Seniors are watching their last sports seasons disappear. College students are being sent home. The elderly are scared to go out of their houses. There's no toilet paper to be found. We were told to prepare for serious disruption, and here we are.

We can curse or we can mourn.

From Paul David Tripp:

"Cursing is all about our comfort, our pleasure, our ease. Cursing is fundamentally self-centered. Mourning embraces the tragedy of the fall, that the world is not the way God meant it to be. 

Mourning calls for God's redeeming, restoring hand. Mourning acknowledges the suffering of others. Mourning is about something bigger than the fact that life is hard. Mourning grieves what sin has done to the cosmos and longs for the Redeemer to come and make his broken world new again. Mourning, then, is a response that is prompted by grace. 

This side of eternity in this broken world, cursing is the default language of the kingdom of self, but mourning is the default language of the kingdom of God. Which language will you speak today?"

I have always welcomed disappointments into my kids' lives. I don't like it when they show up. I don't ask for them. But when they inevitably come, I try hard to be thankful for them. They are opportunities to trust God in a bigger way, to choose to be grateful. When we're all around the dinner table tonight, we'll try to talk about that. But for now, I'm going to mourn for just a bit longer.