Ah, the Beatitudes.
Attitudes we should be.
Sorry for the obvious.
Let me rephrase that...attitudes we should embrace, but really we treat them as suggestions from Jesus of how to be perfect and there is no way we can obtain that so we just read the listing of them in Matthew 5 and smile and nod and agree with Jesus, but never ask him to change us and actually take hold of the Kingdom shift he is trying to instill in us.
Yes Mr. and Ms. OCD...that was a run-on sentence. Check out the first 10 verses of Ephesians...that's all one sentence in the Greek. Paul puts my run-on to shame so stop crying.
I'm going to spend the next few Matthew posts in chapter 5 (and I know they have been lacking lately...I am jumping back into posting now that Fall is rapidly approaching). But I don't want to just run through the Beatitudes like I normally do, briefly commenting on them as a whole...I want us to key in on specific paradigm shifts Jesus is inviting us into when he begins to list off what a life abandoned for the Kingdom of God would look like. Yes, this may take a few weeks. But I really want us to think: What is Jesus inviting us up into in these verses?
Matthew 5:3 says, "Blessed are those who realize their spiritual poverty, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to them." Other translations say "blessed are the poor in spirit" while one paraphrase even says, "you're blessed when you are at the end of your rope."
Then it goes on to say, "With less of you there is more of God and His rule."
Could Jesus possible be saying stop coming to me with your suffocating, shrink-wrapped self-righteousness so you can actually see God and not yourself? Is there a chance that Jesus is speaking straight into our selfish need for neat and tidy spirituality, our pursuit of the black and white (like the Pharisees and the Sabbath) and the fact that we have bought the lie from the enemy that we have it all together?
Blessed are those who realize how poor they really are.
How rank and pungent they really are.
How gross their "acts of holiness" really are.
How feeble they really are.
How unworthy they really are.
How inadequate they really are.
How jacked up they really are.
How far their hearts had turned away from God.
You are blessed.
Why?
Because you don't have to see and hear from God through countless layers of lies of pride and self-righteousness. Because when there is less of you, there is more room for God and His rule.
