“I’m frightened!” he said and clutched his little bag of chips with both hands. He was sitting on his nanny’s lap. The whale leaping from the water in front of him was way too big. It was a scary, crazy, child-eating whale!
When he left Sea World that day, he broke, on the sidewalk, yelling and screaming. It was all just a bit too much. He was eventually picked up and carried off to the car. He needed a good nap.
“Blessed are the poor…” said Jesus.
The little four-year old, on the sidewalk breaking down, was blessed, I think, because he was poor, and he knew it, poor in emotional reserves, poor in self-control and in poor in comfort. And so he was blessed by his nanny, holding him at the whale show, picking him up off the sidewalk, carrying him home to rest.
There are many kinds of poor, and there are many possible blessing, but it is safe to say we are all poor; and therefore, we might all be blessed — maybe.
There is poor in righteousness. That pretty much covers the globe. There is poor in health. We all get there one day. There is poor in self-control, (which is episodic for all at best), poor in insight, poor in resources, poor in wisdom, poor in freedom from addiction, poor in peace, poor in love. It goes on, and on, and on beyond on until it is obvious that it is all.
Poor, and frightened and screaming, eventually — all!
On the same sidewalk — all.
Poor — all!
And so all are all blessed, according to Jesus, if I understand him right, if we realize, recognize and embrace our poverty. If we don’t we aren’t blessed because not knowing we need, we won’t look up, won’t ask and won’t say, “Thanks,” and therefore will miss the blessing of being helped.
It is only when we honestly realize that we are poor that we know we need something more than ourselves and look up and get that needed help. Blessed are all the poor who open the door to the rich comfort of God. Blessed are the nannied.
There is one way more that the poor might be considered blessed. They have the opportunity of figuring it out.
Today I’m poor — poor in peacefulness. I’m upset.
I’m doing my taxes. That’s enough right there to turn the stumach acid pump on. And there is more, much more, of life, to stress over, responsibilities to mangage, payments to be made, contracts to be signed and killer whales to stay out-of-the-way of. There is, life! It’s a kind of constantly stressful poverty.
But I am realizing that each moment has its answers, its solutions, its calm-making decisions, if I will just figure it out. The tax questions, after some hard work, are now answered on my worksheet page, and so will all the other pressing business be answered, as I, figure it out.
It is a blessing, to get to figure it out. It is a blessing to have poverty of some kind, to have taxes of some kind, and to have a brain of some kind, and to get to figure it out after some fashion, and to get up off the hard sidewalk and go home and take a rest afterwards.
Poverty is always our blessed opportunity to figure it out.
And so, happy indeed are the poor, for a least two good reasons.
One, they will be helped, if they look up from their tantrum and ask.
Two, becuase they don’t have enough, they get the blessing of figuring something out.
Happy indeed are the thinking, thankful, receptive poor.
Thrive! 