Blessed are the poor in spirit

While working with my son on his penmanship he had to write the first part of the verse “Blessed are the poor in spirit,for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Matthew 5:3” Of course we could have just simply written the words and gone on to the next subject.

That would take away one of those teaching moments. We need to start out by defining what Blessed means. Then we need to explain the apparent contradiction. Since this is the first part of the Sermon on the Mount we need to establish who Jesus was preaching to. As we can see in the first verse “Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him Matthew 5:1“ Jesus was preaching to the disciples. He probably felt that the disciples could handle the “Blessed are the poor in spirit” better than the multitudes.

The Blessed means happy and does not mean earthly happiness but rather those that live within God’s rules and know they are written in the Book of Life. If you are a committed Christian than you would be considered to be Blessed.

Once we understand what the blessed in “Blessed are the poor in spirit” we can then look at the poor in spirit. The initial thought would be that it is contradictory but that is because we often look at the societal way.

The truly blessed in all of us would mean that we are humble. Humility show us that all our treasures and status comes from the grace of God. If we are truly “poor in spirit” it means that we have opened out heart to the Word of God.

The Bible teaches us that God knows our heart. We tend to suffer from pride. Our society teaches us that a self made man is possible. That you can pull yourselves up by the bootstraps and be successful.

I would challenge you that we achieve anything by the Grace of God. If we would learn more about humility the world would be a safer place.

I pray that I continue to become “poor in spirit” and realize that the treasures await in heaven.