There’s a very particular set of verses in the Bible that are commonly known as The Beatitudes, which could be simply called the Blessings. Basically, Jesus was speaking to a crowd on top of a mountain and he started his message with eight statements that follow the format of: “Blessed are the [blank] for they will [blank].” It’s really straightforward stuff, until you start looking at the things that Jesus calls “blessed” and what he means by it.
A big part of what Jesus seems to be really getting at is what it looks like to live a fulfilled life—a thriving life. When he calls a bunch of different character traits blessed he’s saying that the people that embody these traits are people that are flourishing. Well that makes things easy—we just follow a checklist and we’re living our life to the full, right? Well let’s look at the list first. Jesus tells us that those who are poor in spirit, those who mourn, those who are meek, those who are merciful, and those who are persecuted are all people who are flourishing. At first glance that sounds a bit backwards. How could it be that mourning equates to flourishing? Or meekness? Or persecution? Well it’s not incredibly obvious at first, but let’s try to unpack it.
First, these traits are hard—whether they are traits we choose to embody, or experiences we go through, they’re just plain difficult. Mourning is a devastating process. Forgiveness and mercy are incredibly difficult to give out. Meekness and humility make us feel weak. These things often feel unnatural and uncomfortable. As we learn to live through these experiences and live out these traits, we frequently fall flat on our faces. And hear this: that’s totally okay. They are really difficult—so difficult that culture often counsels us to avoid them.
But Jesus says these traits are blessed and valuable—AKA living these traits out is worth it. When is mourning the hardest? For many of us, it’s when we’ve lost someone we’ve loved with everything in us. Those who mourn are flourishing because they are the ones approaching relationships the right way—the all-in, selfless, unconditional, Jesus-like way. What about forgiveness? That one is notoriously hard, but when you bring yourself to forgive, you free yourself from having to carry around burdens of hurt and hate. Humility can feel humiliating, but it isn’t an expression of weakness. On the contrary, it’s the strongest and bravest people that are able to freely admit when they are wrong.
You see the traits Jesus valued—mercy, humility, mourning, integrity, peacemaking, to name a few—are all incredibly difficult to live out, but they result in a richness and fullness of life that can’t be found or faked elsewhere. Learning these traits and even learning how to say simple phrases like “I forgive you,” “I love you,” or “I was wrong,” open up a whole new world and way of living. How would we approach these hard things if we believed Jesus when he said they produce growth and flourishing?
