Sorrow, pain, and brokenness these are just a few of the things that come to mind when I think of the word “mourn.” I always get a picture of the women in movies that are dressed all in black wearing some sort of a hair net over their eyes wailing at the top of their lungs. I began to think of how much relevance does mourning have in my generation? I can’t tell you how many times I have talked with youth and young adults about truly sad things and yet there seemed to be not even an ounce of hurt.

When I began to really ponder what it meant to have a true since of mourning, I realized that mourning does not exist in my generation. Thousands and thousands of young people are walking around with some of the biggest wounds imaginable and yet are closing their eyes and pretending that it isn’t really there. Pain has become a common characteristic of the average teenager and young adult. I remember one day I was having a Bible study with some teenagers and I asked them if they had ever experienced hardships or hurtful things? There was a boy there who with a straight face said, “I walked in and found my father laying there dead, he died of alcohol poisoning.” Later on I found out that not only had alcohol destroyed his father’s life but also his mother was struggling with the same fight against alcohol. This young teenager didn’t show any emotion or hurt towards these situations that had happened to him. I realized something through this that our generation has been taught to slap a smile on their face and laugh at hurt.

In a generation that has been destroyed by divorce, abuse, addiction, and hate no one will admit that anything is wrong. People speak of painful things almost as if they are the latest fad. What is completely abnormal, people speak of as being normal. Divorce is ripping families apart, but you shouldn’t mourn because it is happening to everyone. Abuse is shattering lives, but it doesn’t matter because you can’t ask someone to act humane. Immorality is running ramped and crushing lives, but your body was created for whatever feels good.

No matter how hard you try to hide your hurt, it will always come back to haunt you. You can’t just close your eye to a gunshot wound and hope that if you do it long enough it will go away. We must understand that God has given us all emotions, and that it is ok to show pain and hurt when something happens. God’s desire is not that people would live a life in sadness and mourning, but that they would encounter the power of the cross and find healing there. There is a deep desire in this generation for reality. They don’t want to just sit there and live a lie, but have a desire to be confronted with truth and reality. The only way that you can truly deal with mourning is when you are willing to embrace it and allow the healing power of God to flow. The greatest reality that we have in this world is that of the mighty healing power of God.

Written by: Natalie Schmelzer