the beatitudes on Resilience

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...

There is a strength, a power even, in understanding brokenness, because embracing our brokenness creates a need and desire for mercy, and perhaps a corresponding need to show mercy. When you experienc...

Almighty God, we trust in our own strength, abilities, and resources. We think too highly of what we have to offer this world. The truth is we cannot do anything without your strength and all we have ...

Almighty God, harsh words and personal attacks can bring out the worst in us. We find ourselves spending energy on thoughts of retaliation and plans to protect ourselves. Father forgive us. We long to...

According to the Puritan pastor Thomas Watson, Meekness toward other people consists of three things: the bearing of injuries, the forgiving of injuries, and the returning of good for evil.

Merciful God, we turn away from the pains and cries of our world. Overwhelmed by its brokenness, we ignore the call to engage and love those who are hurting. Father, forgive us, strengthen us, and hel...

Almighty God, too often we settle for brokenness in our lives. Rather than offering forgiveness, we hold onto offense. Rather than pursuing justice, we turn away. Rather than offering mercy, we...

To become peacemakers, then, we must begin with ourselves. We must ask ourselves, “Why do I make cutting remarks to another person? Why do I make demeaning remarks about them?” We must also ask oursel...

The meek shall inherit the Earth, but not its mineral rights.

Being a peacemaker is part of being surrendered to God, for God brings peace. We abandon the effort to get our needs met through the destruction of enemies. God comes to us in Christ to make peace wit...

Ancient lens What’s the historical context? Wisdom Song It is not too far a stretch to imagine an eager young person sitting at the feet of a well-seasoned elder and receiving the words of thi...

Preaching Commentary Imagine Jesus at the beginning of his ministry He calls his first disciples – the educated and advantaged? No. Some fishermen. He travels around his home region of Galilee proc...

Following Dallas Willard’s line of thinking in  The Divine Conspiracy , we don’t believe Jesus is saying, “Be merciful and you will be blessed.” Rather, his idea is, “As a tender-hearted person you ge...

The Beatitudes name nine distinct areas of human struggle that Jesus addresses in his teaching on the hill. Our first instincts are to be anxious, avoidant, competitive, apathetic, judgmental, evasive...

Just a few minutes spent reflecting on the promises that come attached to the Beatitudes can lift us up like the whirlwind of God’s love in a revival tent meeting: inherit the earth, yours is the king...

The Bruderhof is one such Christian community with many locations around the world. Unlike most such attempts to build radical communities, the Bruderhof has not only survived, it is thriving. In 2021...

Imagine Jesus at the beginning of his ministry He calls his first disciples – the educated and advantaged? No. Some fishermen. He travels around his home region of Galilee proclaiming the good news o...

In his thoughtful book, Our Good Crisis: Overcoming Moral Chaos with the Beatitudes , Jonathan K. Dodson asks an important question: how do you mourn the losses in your life: How do you mourn? ...

I don’t like to be meek. I like to be in control. I like to be right, independent, strong, organized, able to handle whatever happens to me, viewed positively by people and on top of my emotions. I a...

Making peace makes us God's children—and kin to each other.

These ‘meek’ people, Jesus added, ‘shall inherit the earth’. One would have expected the opposite. One would think that ‘meek’ people get nowhere because everybody ignores them or else rides roughshod...

Becoming a child is living the Beatitudes and so finding the narrow gate into the Kingdom.

First, the quality Jesus blesses in the third Beatitude has nothing to do with all the negative images triggered by the English word “meek.” Although it is a challenge to pin down the exact meaning of...

A third way of interpreting possession of the earth is that for someone who lives the Beatitudes—a man of humble heart, poor and meek—is well in the end. Every circumstance, fortunate or unfortunate, ...

This blog post started as the introduction to a book review (details below), but I rather quickly realized I had two posts on my hands, not one: There are two quotes about the beatitudes that I lov...

Blessed are the forgetful, for they get the better even of their blunders.

Self-made and self-sufficient people live in a fantasy world, empty of the reality of God. In contrast, the poor in spirit are deeply aware of being God-made and God-sufficient:

Too often those characteristics [of the Beatitudes] … are turned into ideals we must strive to attain. As ideals, they can become formulas for power rather than descriptions of the kind of people char...

Jesus explains what undergirds the actions of Paul, Isaiah, and Rev. Dr. King in two of his Beatitudes. He says, “Blessed are those who grieve, for they will be comforted. . . . Blessed are those who ...

A friend of mine who is an entrepreneur was listening to a CD of a series of messages I had given on the Beatitudes. When he came to meekness, he told me, he skipped over it. He wasn’t interested in b...