Poor in Spirit


There has been some spiritual tag-teaming going on with my soul. I have been reading one of the books I received gratis for winning the essay contest Likewise sponsored (an imprint of IVP) The Cost of Community: Jesus, St. Francis and Life in the Kingdom by Jamie Arpin-Ricci. Winning free books? Words begetting more words, like Old Testament genealogy. It will never end.

In the book, Ricci explores the life of St. Francis. I read through the chapter on "Blessed Are The Poor In Spirit." St. Francis and his fellows renounced worldly wealth and were mendicants (learned a new word in reading the book). That is, they were beggars.This morning, in my Calvin devotional, I read his thoughts on being Poor In Spirit. I assume when God pairs St. Francis out of the Catholic tradition with a leading Protestant Reformer, that the ecclesiastical spectrum is covered and He is getting my attention.

Both St. Francis and John Calvin would concur that we are beggars before God for grace. We can give nothing and receive everything. The peril of the rich man, and I think being "Poor in Spirit" does have a warning to the rich--although it is not exclusively or even primarily about money--is believing that anything and everything can be bought, given that one has enough cash in the coffers. Usually the rich are not particularly enamored by the prospects of eternal life. Life is good here and now and money makes it happen.Then, life runs out, even if there are still dollars in the bank. The Reaper always comes for the final withdrawal from this world.

Being Poor In Spirit seems to be a state of lowliness in response to God's highness. We get quite full of ourselves like a pride balloon, and when the adversities of life deflate us downward, we have the opportunity to reflect on our frailty and fragility. Rather than getting into the low self-worth vs. high self-esteem debate, it really come down to just thinking about ourselves less, not less of ourselves. The more unburdened we are of the self, the more we upwardly drift.      


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Shake the Dust: Anis Mojgani

Pslam 90:2 "Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God." I am not real certain where Anis Mojgani comes from belief-wise. Cats like him tend to be synchrestic spiritually rather than Christ-centered. Yet, this poem captures the spirit of Jesus. What this poem also needs is grace....we shake off sin and mortality and take on Christ and immortality. This is for the fat girls This is for the little brothers For the former prom queen And for the milk crate ball players This is for the school yard wimps And the childhood bullies that tormented them Shake the dust. This is for the benches and the people sitting upon them. This is for the bus drivers driving a million broken hymns And for the men who have to hold down 3 jobs, Simply to hold up their children. For the nighttime schoolers And for the midnight bike riders trying to fly Shake the dust. For the two year olds who cann...
Read more

Thomas Jefferson & Jesus

Image
I was reminded today, by a friend's post on Facebook, that it is Thomas Jefferson's birthday. So, I had a little party on my own of watching two documentaries on him through Netflix Instant. There is much I admire about Jefferson, there is much I dislike. He is polarizing figure. Besides the owning of slaves, the second most odious character flaw was his castration of the New Testament . See my slice of his slicing. Live by the razor, die by the razor. I did learn a cool new word call Amphiboligism which means ambiguity. The arrogance of Jefferson is astounding as if he had a more accurate vantage point of Jesus after 17 centuries than Jesus's own contemporaries and colleagues. In an empirical and scientific sense, he is at a considerable disadvantage in his postulations. When my wife and I visited Monticello on our Honeymoon, the most memorable moment there --besides my downing a can of Pringles all at once (in my own version of the "Pursuit of Happiness" w...
Read more