“When he saw the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. Then he began to teach them, saying:” (Matthew 5:1-2 CSB)
Devotional
I put together an IKEA furniture recently without reading the instructions. I figured I could eyeball it. Two hours and one wobbly shelf later, I was on the floor with an Allen key, starting over from step one. We do this with furniture and we do it with our whole lives. We figure we can eyeball it. We piece together a sense of purpose from whatever advice sounds confident enough, and we hope it holds.
Jesus sat down on a mountainside with a crowd of people who were doing exactly that. Tired, hungry for direction, pulling guidance from a dozen conflicting places. And he didn’t hand them a checklist. He started describing a kind of life, one statement at a time, each one building on the last. We know these as the Beatitudes, and they open the most famous sermon Jesus ever gave.
We’re going to spend the next several days sitting with these eight statements together. Fair warning: they don’t read like good advice. They read like Jesus has taken everything we assume about a successful life and turned it over to look at the underside. He blesses the poor, the grieving, the gentle, the hungry. Not the impressive. Not the put-together.
Here’s what I keep needing to remember as we start: this isn’t a new set of rules to perform our way into God’s approval. It’s a description of what already happens in someone who has stopped trying to prove themselves to him. That’s good news, because none of us are starting this series with our instructions fully read either.
Reflection
Whose voice has been shaping my idea of a good life lately? Am I willing to let Jesus rewrite that definition, even where it contradicts what I’ve believed for years? I want to start this series honest about how much I still need to hear it.
Prayer
Father, we come into this series a little unsure of what we’re about to find. Open our hands and our minds to what you want to teach us here. Where our definition of a blessed life doesn’t match yours, we ask you to change it gently. We want to know you more through these words. In Jesus’ name, amen.
We’ll pick this up tomorrow with the very first statement Jesus made, and it’s a strange place to start: blessing for the poor in spirit.