Last week we studied the beatitude “blessed are you who mourn, for you shall be comforted” (Matthew 5:4). It is an interesting point Jesus makes. Because it’s not just: people who mourn now will one day go to heaven, though it is that too. It is saying something deep about our present experience.

Without mourning and pain and trial, he says, there is no comfort. Nothing to be saved from. No relief because there is nothing to be relieved about. Mourning and comfort are on two ends of a bell curve. If you’ve never known the one you’ve never known the other.

Let me explain it this way. On June 19 the world will experience the next Pixar movie, Inside Out. I have been reading about it for a long time. They are saying it is Oscar worthy outside of the animation category. The story takes place in a little girls head (Riley) – emotions like sadness, joy, fear, etc., are personified by different characters. The crisis of the story is about Sadness and Joy together getting lost in the far reaches of Riley’s mind. I read a New York Times article this week wherein the director admitted something fascinating. The story wasn’t always this way.

For a long time, the movie had Joy and Fear getting lost together. “It seemed like the funniest choice,” the director said. “But as work progressed, the pairing felt wrong.” He went for a walk one afternoon and started thinking about quitting the film. He just couldn’t pull this movie off. While on his stroll, he started to think about his friends at Pixar and what he would miss about them. “I love them,” he said. “They make me happy. But these are people I have also been angry at. I’ve gone through sadness with these people, especially when we lost Steve Jobs.” He continued: “At that moment, I realized that Sadness was the key. We were trying to push her to the side in the story. But she needed to be the one going on the journey into Riley’s memory. Joy needed to understand that it’s O.K. for Sadness to be included at the controls of our mind once in a while. It’s only the interaction and complexity of all of these emotions that brings a real connection between people.”

That is a profound and life-altering perspective.  It’s okay for Sadness to be included at the controls of our mind once in a while. This is what Jesus is saying.

Without sadness we don’t know true joy. Without us really feeling sadness about our sin and separation from God and people, we will never feel the opposite end of the spectrum. Comfort. Joy, and the making of a new world. As one writer said, ‘self-renunciation is the way to world domination.’ Blessed are the meek, Jesus said. For they will inherit the earth. Indeed.