thought exercise on Poor in Spirit

In June 2024, I (A. J.) had the opportunity to visit the Oregon State Correctional Institution in Salem, Oregon, to meet with a group of inmates who had read one of my recent books. The experience was...

One of the most challenging and complex economic realities faced by many of our neighbors who live paycheck to paycheck is finding financial resources to cover immediate and unexpected expenses. To ad...

The beatitudes paint a comprehensive portrait of a Christian disciple. We see him [or her] first alone on his knees before God, acknowledging his spiritual poverty and mourning over it. This makes him...

In October 2014 Wired magazine reported on the dirty work every social media company must somehow handle: moderating the deluge of exploitative, degrading content posted in unimaginable quantities aro...

At the last Judgment Christ will say to us, "Come, you also! Come, drunkards! Come, weaklings! Come, children of shame!" And He will say to us: "Vile beings, you who are in the image of...

The comedian Richard Pryor, who was critically injured in a severe accident, once shared on Johnny Carson’s show that when faced with life-threatening situations, worldly concerns lose their significa...

We have conducted the previous exercise in dozens of middle-to-upper-class, predominantly Caucasian, North American churches. In the vast majority of cases, these audiences describe poverty differentl...

In his thoughtful book, Our Good Crisis: Overcoming Moral Chaos with the Beatitudes , Jonathan K. Dodson describes one of the keys to understanding the beatitudes: live faithfully now, experience...

The word blessed has been among the vocabulary I’ve removed from my daily life. In the faith of my young adulthood, it was a word that filled my conversations: a term to close out emails or to d...

One evening I was taking a stretch break from study, walking out into the night. Soon I began speaking prayers of complaint . . . a little like the lament psalms in the Bible. I wasn’t angry, really, ...

In Paul’s day the church quarreled over the Jewish law and over genealogies, over meat sacrificed to idols and sabbath practices, and over favoritism shown to the rich patrons and negligence shown to ...

No person has ever walked our earth and been free from the pains of loneliness. Rich and poor, wise and ignorant, faith-filled and agnostic, healthy and unhealthy have all alike had to face and strugg...

My first conscious experience of hearing the voice of Jesus occurred when I was a college student. It grew out of a period of genuine frustration. Because of my poor academic training and a less-than-...

In his excellent book, Recapturing the Wonder: Transcendent Faith in a Disenchanted World , Mike Cosper explains the value in persevering through the difficult realities of practicing solitude. ...

A lesson often learned the hard way in each of our spiritual journeys is mistaking goodwill for vocation. Sometimes we feel deeply about an experience we have, whether it be on a mission trip or even ...

For some people the brokenness in these foundational relationships results in material poverty, that is their not having sufficient money to provide for the basic physical needs of themselves and thei...

Most of us know Mother Teresa for her stalwart ministry to the poorest of the poor in the slums of Calcutta. But as with each of us, there is a public side of our lives and a private side. Mother Tere...

Today, the church in America seems to have traded in its mandate to be eccentric and aimed instead at an unconscious conventionality. Rural norms are too quaint, urban norms too dangerous, so the chur...

The poverty of an inner-city neighborhood like Sandtown was not initially the product of individual irresponsible behavior or family breakdown. A complex range of structural factors led to the exclusi...

God hath given to man a short time here upon earth, and yet upon this short time eternity depends: but so, that for every hour of our life (after we are persons capable of laws, and know good from evi...

As a study assistant to the Anglican pastor and writer John Stott during my early years as a believer, I witnessed John’s faithfulness in public and private, as a highly visible speaker and as a nearl...

There are few words in any language that can equal dikaiosis for theological depth and resonance. It has been at the center of scholarly debate for centuries. Known largely as “justification,” it is s...

One Sunday morning, after delivering a sermon, a preacher was asked by a friend how it was received by the congregation. The sermon focused on the Christian responsibility of the wealthy to help the p...

Angela’s Ashes took the publishing world by storm when it was released in September 1996. It won numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize in the category of Biography/Autobiography. It was also a...

A lack of nutrition in early life can result in stunted growth. Stunting results in lifelong health complications. According to the WHO: Stunting in early life -- particularly in the first 1000 days...

“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime. Therefore, don’t give a man a fish.” This is the cultural mantra of many in the middle and upper ...

One of my favorite stories is of John of Kronstadt. He was the Nineteenth Century Russian Orthodox priest at the time when alcohol abuse was rampant. None of the priests ventured out of their churches...

In their thoughtful book on reconciliation, Emmanuel Katongole and Chris Rice share how Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker movement showed up in the lives of the working poor, which ultimately enable...

In today’s world, holy is the most offensive of all four – letter words. It’s far more acceptable to say, “My life is so messed up,” than it is to say, “I am striving to be holy.” For many, Christiani...

The Bible envisions the global church as one body with no national or geographic boundaries. This one body is called to steward all of its resources — spiritual, human, technological, theological, org...