A Thought For The Week Of April 16

"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." (Matthew 5:3) The first Beatitude, and it starts on a puzzling note. The poor in spirit? What's so great about them? Isn't the goal to be filled with the Spirit? To be filled with overflowing? To be spiritually rich? But Jesus tells us that to be spiritually poverty stricken was a good - indeed, a blessed - thing? Something seems not right. And yet. To be poor is not to have enough of something, or to have less than others - and I've known a lot of people who are (or who've been) poor in a material sense, and yet their lives are filled to abundance with the things that really count. Maybe the only way to actually be filled with the Spirit of God is to be poor in spirit. That's no upper case "s" after all. Maybe Jesus means that the only way to truly gain the "Spirit" - and all the blessings God wants us to have - is to acknowledge the spiritual poverty we have without God. Only when we acknowledge our spiritual poverty - that without God we can never have enough of anything - can we truly have "the kingdom of heaven" within us, because acknowledging our spiritual poverty opens the door for the Holy Spirit - the Giver of Life - to begin working on us. Let's all acknowledge our need for what only God can give. Then we'll begin to see the kingdom of heaven today. Have a great week!