Leadership Thought: What I Learned Last Night While Studying the Beatitudes.

Dear Friends,

Last night we were studying the Beatitudes in our Men’s Spiritual Discipleship class. During the class one of our members asked this thought-provoking question: “What if you were one of Jesus' disciples and you were sitting on the Galilean hillside as he taught the message on the Beatitudes for the first time? How would you have reacted? How would you have responded when you heard the words “blessed are the poor in spirit,” or “blessed are the meek” or “blessed are those who mourn"?

Oswald Sanders points out in his book Spiritual Leadership that the word “blessed” or happy, which is often used to introduce each of the  8 Beatitudes, can also be translated "bliss, or “to be envied” or to be  congratulated."  How did those disciples respond when they heard Jesus say it is blissful to mourn, or you are to be envied for being poor in spirit or you are to be congratulated for being meek?

We have read or heard these 8 Beatitudes so many times that some of us even know them by heart, but I wonder how many of us have ever let the truth of their meaning really sink into the depths of our hearts.

For example, when we hear the words “blessed are those who mourn,” or think about the “bliss of mourning” do we fully understand the truth of what we are hearing. How happy are the unhappy is what Jesus is really saying?

In commenting on this particular Beatitude, Sanders writes,  “It is not bereavement that is primarily in view, although that need not be excluded. The word mourn conveys the idea of grief of the deepest kind. It is mourning over sin and failure, over the slowness of our growth in likeness to Christ-mourning over our spiritual bankruptcy” (p.13).

Wow, when was the last time that you or I mourned over our spiritual bankruptcy or grieved over our lack of spiritual growth? I, for one, plead guilty. 

Yours in faith and friendship,

Tom