Saturday, February 01, 2014

Saturday, February 1, 2014



Today’s text

Matthew 5:1-9 

Seeing the crowds, he (Jesus) went onto the mountain. And when he was seated his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak. This is what he taught them: How blessed are the poor in spirit: the kingdom of Heaven is theirs. Blessed are the gentle: they shall have the earth as inheritance. Blessed are those who mourn: they shall be comforted. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for uprightness: they shall have their fill. Blessed are the merciful: they shall have mercy shown them. Blessed are the pure in heart: they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers: they shall be recognized as children of God.

Reflection

There is only One who is truly blessed, and there is only one true blessedness.

God is the Blessed One, and blessedness is to know God from the inside, as a participant, and not from the outside looking in.

Christian theology long ago fixed on the concept of Trinity, tri-unity, as a way to describe the indescribable God. A stream, a river of infinite and unending love, flows through God.

No, that is wrong. God, the Blessed One, is this flow of mutually shared love coursing among the three expressions of God, Father, Son and Spirit.

Blessedness is to feel and know yourself within that flow as it bears you up, pulls you along, fills your heart, stirs your energy and gives you life in the face of all that would drain it from you.

Poverty and sorrow, weakness and fear, denial of justice, hunger for mercy denied, rejection and conflict--they all mar the beauty of creation and human life.

But the stream of blessedness, the current of love that flows from the heart of God through every corner of creation is not dammed up by the misfortunes of life. It is not held back by the things that we imagine must destroy human happiness and our joy.

The current of Divine love flows through all of this, through misfortunes and pains, through successes and moments of great elation. Ironically, it is often the pains of life that are most likely to draw us into the stream of true blessedness

Where ever and however the currents of love find and fill us, touch and renew us, there is God, there is blessedness, there we find ourselves in God, inside the wonder we cannot define but only experience.

Nor can we make blessedness happen for ourselves. It is always gift, the gift of being in the God-heart, feeling carried, lifted and filled by a current of love that never runs dry.

But we can do something. We can open our mind and senses to the face, places and ways the divine current of blessedness runs through our lives and times--and go there, often!

And we can notice the ways and places we pull away--in sarcasm or cynicism, in anxiety and self-seeking, in hurts and hatreds--from the people and means through which the wonder of blessedness reaches us and pulls us into its flow.

This choice still belongs to us. It is the choice between jumping in the river on one hand, or complaining that life is too hot and dry while standing on the bank.

Pr. David L. Miller