“I love everyone, but I don’t have to like them,” I overheard these words of a fellow member of a church I belonged to a few years ago. I was shocked! How can we love someone without liking them? We use the word love so much, and liking, too, that I think we skip over […]

Have you been tracking the pictures of magnolias in my neighborhood that I’ve been posting the last eight weeks alongside the blog posts on the Beatitudes?  The flowers have gone from a tight bud through various stages of opening to a full flower, suggesting that the Beatitudes are a flowering of human potential in God. […]

  “Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness sake; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the […]

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.”  If Jesus is known as the Prince of Peace [foretold in Isaiah 9:6], then to follow Him means we are at peace with all that He was and taught, that we are at peace with ourselves and with everyone else. There are […]

  “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.” Purity is holiness, untainted by any human impulse, unblemished by sin.  Jesus is talking about the releasing of all that stands between us and God in this Beatitude. And when we have released all that separates us from God, we will see God.[1] […]

  “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall be shown mercy.” The Greek word used most often in the New Testament for mercy is eleos. It means mercy, pity, the moral quality of feeling compassion and especially of showing kindness toward someone in need. This can refer to a human kindness and to God’s kindness […]

“Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.” It is not just that they care about righteousness, and are willing to follow the laws of God, they crave righteousness, they are so connected to this need for righteousness that they burn with the hunger for it. These are […]

      “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” Whether our life circumstances have left us meek or humble or gentle or we have been “gentled,”[1] as Cynthia Bourgeault would put it, that is, healed and transformed by our surrender to the arms of God, the result is the same: we […]

             “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” This second of the Beatitudes addresses all those who have lost someone or something dear to them. There is an emptiness in the people who mourn, a loss that hurts terribly. And yet death is the most natural of things that happen to every […]

  “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” [KJV] Today I am starting a nine-week series on the Beatitudes, looking at each one from several different points of view. I’ll be referencing the works of Dallas Willard, Cynthia Bourgeault, Neil Douglas-Klotz, Jean-Ives Leloup, Jim Forrest and the Message. Let’s […]