: blessed are the poor in spirit :

... those of you reading this are not at all unfamiliar with the words in the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus advocates a whole new set of values, or way of thinking about our life on earth. An all time favourite book is John Stott's Christian Counter-Culture : the Message of the Sermon on the Mount ... which came out more than 30 years ago. I could have used the hard cover version, as my 1978 paperback version is pretty beaten up.

... I grew up on the standard teaching(s) on the Sermon on the Mount, but Stott stopped me in my tracks, and made me look at it differently. Since then I've heard plenty of sermons on the whole sermon, not just the Beatitudes, and I'm guessing somewhere some preacher was the one who re-framed 'poor in spirit' as humble, whether or not their circumstances demand humility or not, or maybe an even better word, teachable? Teachability is high on my list of attractive things in a co-worker, a colleague, a partner, a child, a leader, a supervisor, a teacher, an elder, a pastor, a mayor, a premier, a prime minister, a president. Why? maybe they will inherit the Kingdom of Heaven ... due to their posture, not their positional power.

... it is odd, but probably clarifying, for me to rehearse the last 2-4-6-8-10 years in terms of who is/was teachable, appropriately humble, poor-in-spirit even. We all get things wrong. We often get things right. The trick, in my books, seems to be knowing when we're right, not to ram stuff down people's throats. And when we're wrong, to accept that, learn from it, not be a pompous jerk about it. Then there's my final category ... those oblivious to the fact that there may actually be a snowball's chance in Victoria that they might not be right all of the time. If you ask me they're too busy being right, and too often telling people exactly why, to have a humble, or teachable thought cross their minds. Rather sad, but just try and tell them.

Personally? I wouldn't mind having 'poor-in-spirit' on my gravestone.

dlc