I know this is long friends...but if you can read it through my hope is you will indeed feel blessed. During the early days of the ‘Old West’ in the United States the phrase, “Give me the good stuff” was usually uttered in a saloon and was a reference to the best whiskey in the place. Today it seems our words, actions, and most importantly our bank statements reveal that we want “the good stuff” in relation to nearly everything the world has to offer. There is certainly nothing wrong with wanting the best for our families in regard to safety and security, but just how much further does it go for most of us? Today I was reading part of Luke’s account of what many people call The Sermon on the Plain…and before Jesus ever speaks, he has this huge throng of people crowding around him wanting to hear him, but also wanting to be healed and cured and simply experience the power of his touch. They all want “the good stuff”. I can’t blame them! But then Jesus says this: ‘Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. ‘Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. ‘Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. ‘Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice on that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets. Well now, that certainly doesn’t sound like “the good stuff”! I mean, we all want to be blessed in the eyes of God, but come on! Poverty, hunger, weeping, and being hated don’t sound like blessings to me. But that’s because I sometimes mistakenly see with the vision the world has given me, rather than the original vision given to me by God. God’s dream is to flip the vision we sometimes get from the world right-side-up. Those the world considers; outsiders, outcasts, losers, bums, or ‘people silly enough to believe in something they can’t see, that a bunch of other people basically made up centuries ago’, are actually blessed in the eyes of God. And God’s dream is that we begin to see them with God’s vision rather than the world’s. God’s vision helps me see these Beatitudes, or blessings from God, in a different way: Some people are so poor…all they have is money. Some people are so hungry…they don’t realize a meal of bread and wine is the only one that will truly satisfy their soul. Some people are so caught up in being sad…they’ve forgotten how to laugh and delight in the Lord. Some people are so busy trying to be liked by ‘those on the inside’…they fail to recognize they are pushing themselves outside of God’s love and blessings. The problem is, we are all those ‘some people’ at one time or another. Perhaps God is calling us to reconsider our continuous mantra of “Give me the good stuff”. Perhaps God would have us alter it to, “Give away the good stuff…in order to receive the best stuff.” You see, if we fill our hands, hearts, and houses with the ‘good stuff’ of the world, we have nowhere to put the very best stuff God so freely offers. What we are freely offered from God is incomparable to anything we can buy, earn, or acquire in any other way. So, may we all decide to give away our incredible abundance of ‘good stuff’, and open ourselves completely to God’s best. Peace & Blessings, Robert+
Posted on: Wed, 12 Jun 2013 15:16:57 +0000
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