In my last post, I started speaking about the meaning of blessing, what Jesus was saying when he was speaking about being blessed. Now the big thing that I wanted to show in my last post is that it is not about how you are doing financially or how you are doing health-wise, you being blessed has everything to do with something entirely different. The thing that I wanted to highlight about blessing is that in Jesus’ understanding, in Jesus’ kingdom, you are blessed when you have a certain mindset and a certain view of things. Jesus says a set of nine blessings and these blessings go in order and they show something deep about how those that follow Jesus are meant to view the world, how they are meant to view themselves, and ultimately it shows us a truly deep and profound message of the gospel. Jesus declares these nine blessings knowing full well that we are not fully able to accomplish what he says, he knows that we are imperfect beings yet these are things we are meant to be striving towards in our lives, they are things that only one has ever accomplished, that one is Jesus. As I go through these nine blessings I know that I will not be able to fully cover the depth of what Jesus was actually bringing but in this post I hope to inspire you to go through them to meditate on them, to chew them over and allow them to deeply impact you.

Blessed are the poor in Spirit

Jesus starts his blessings by saying the famous phrase “Bless are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of God” (Matthew 5:3). Now I have always read this phrase as poor meaning literally poor, meaning those that have a lack of something. This may not be the understanding of which you came to when you first read this but for me, this is how I have always understood it. My understanding of this verse has been to see that Jesus is saying that when times get tough that you are blessed and I have had the understanding that Jesus is telling us that it is a good thing to sometimes struggle, sadly I had missed the point of what Jesus was saying. Jesus says “poor in spirit”, he does not say “blessed are the poor, those that can not pay rent”, this would probably make sense for the people that Jesus is talking to, it would connect with them. Jesus is not trying to say things that we would love to hear he is speaking the truth and it is important for us to discover what that truth actually is. Now if I were to truly look at the phrase poor in spirit I would need to ask what it means to be poor in spirit. To be poor in spirit seems to mean something along the lines of seeing that I am corrupt, seeing that I am a mess, that I am not perfect, I am sinful. Jesus says that the blessed is the one that sees that they are sinful, that recognises the wickedness in their own hearts and sees that it is something that is not good. This is a person who does not stand pridefully thinking that they are all that great but rather sees the evil in themselves and also sees the evil in the world, they see that the world is not a perfect place and that there is much evil and wickedness. Jesus shows that if you want to be in the kingdom of heaven you don’t start with power, fame, riches, or knowledge, instead you start with seeing that you have issues, that the world has issues. Now the question we could start asking ourselves is now what do I do, I see that I am wicked, I see that I do wrong but how exactly does that get me into the kingdom of heaven, how does something imperfect enter into God’s kingdom, the great thing for us is that Jesus did not stop at just one blessing, he had nine of them and all of them connect.

Blessed are those who mourn

The next part of Jesus’ blessings is the statement, “Blessed are those who mourn”, now the morning is something that we usually relate to heartbreak or to funerals, it’s not something that I would usually put in the same sentence as being blessed. Now one thing I have learnt while studying the Bible is that one verse must not be taken as a single verse but rather must be taken in connection to the verses before it. Now before I get into all of that I first want to look at the word mourn. Now I believe Jesus very purposefully chose the word mourn, word as I said before relates to funerals and hearts break, it is not just being sad about something but rather it is a deep hurt, a deep sadness. When someone is mourning it is usually not just they are feeling something but rather it is seen in them, we know when someone is mourning the loss of a loved one or is mourning over that heartbreak. I find that morning is a truly deep feeling and when Jesus uses it here he seems to be very aware of that. Jesus had just spoken about the poor in spirit and that had to do with seeing sinfulness and brokenness, when Jesus brings in mourning he is speaking along the same lines as what he was speaking about before. Jesus shows his speakers that you are blessed when you see your brokenness and the world’s brokenness and you allow that to be something that deeply impacts you. It is very easy at times to see that you have problems or that the world has problems but what is missing in many of us is that we don’t allow that brokenness to actually affect us, we don’t mourn over our own brokenness. Jesus calls us to see our brokenness to see that brokenness of the world and mourn over it, to be affected when we see people mistreating each other or when we see people suffering because of either yourself or someone else. Jesus wants us to see that comfort comes to those who see that things are messed up and don’t just sit back but rather allow it to stir an emotion in them.

Jesus has opened his list of blessings with two very big things, Jesus calls us to be people who see the sin and brokenness in the world and allow it to be something that affects us. It can be easy to look at people getting mistreated and to turn a blind eye, we even do this when we ourselves mistreat people, many times we know we are doing wrong towards someone else yet we take a stance of not caring. I have found that many of us are very good at the first blessing, the poor in spirit, we know when we do wrong, we know when others do wrong yet we never go to the next step. We almost take a self-righteous stance of not deeply caring enough for other people or not humbling ourselves enough that we actually do something about it. In the next post I will start with the next blessing but for now, as you go through your week let these two blessings settle in you, ask yourself if you are someone that would fall into these two categories and don’t focus on them as singular topics, rather look at how they connect and how they are meant to challenge you.