As I wrote earlier Sara and I are reading through The Christ of the Mount by E. Stanley Jones while she gets ready to leave for work in the morning. This book is a classic study through the Beatitudes, especially how the blend together in our lives to demonstrate God’s life to the world. Here he deals with the third beatitude, the meek. But he postulates that it is a convergence of the first two—the renunciated life of the poor in spirit, and willingness to enter into other people’s pain as those who mourn.
As hydrogen and oxygen, two diverse elements, coming together produce an entirely new product, water, so the spirit of renunciation and the spirit of service coming together in a man make a new being, the most formidable being on earth-the terrible meek.
They are terrible in that they want nothing, and hence cannot be tempted or bought, and in that they are willing to go any lengths for others because they feel so deeply. Christ standing before Pilate is a picture of the Terrible Meek. He could not be bought or bullied, for he wanted nothing—nothing except to give his life for the very men who were crucifying him. Here is the supreme strength—it possesses itself, hence possesses the earth. It is so strong, so patient, so fit to survive that it inherits the earth.
No one gives the earth to those who have this terrible meekness; they come into it as their natural right, they inherit it because they have the blood of God in their veins.
On an unrelated note, I leave tomorrow for a week in the midwest. I’ll be in Windsor, Canada over the weekend with a Messianic fellowship that wants to sort out the freedom of relationship from the bondage of religion. Should be interesting. Then I’ll hang out in Detroit on Sunday night and Monday. On Tuesday I fly to Des Moines, Iowa to help a school district there deal with some harassment issues as part of my BridgeBuilders work. This is a tough trip to pack for!
