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. I don’t know about you, but at first glance that sounds a bit backwards to me. How could it be that mourning equates to flourishing? Or meekness? Or persecution? Well it’s not incredibly obvious at first, but as we started talking to people about these traits, two things started to become clear.
First, as a whole, these traits are difficult to live out. Mourning is a devastating process. Forgiveness and mercy are incredibly difficult to give out. Meekness and humility make us feel weak. These traits are not second nature, they’re more like a second language. Most of us have to learn them and practice them, and we’ll frequently do and say the wrong thing in that learning process. And hear this: that’s totally okay. They are really difficult.
But second, living these traits out is worth it. When is mourning the hardest? For me, it’s been when I’ve lost someone I’ve loved with everything that’s in me. 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,” “I was wrong,” or “goodbye” open up a whole new world and way of living. It’s almost like learning a second language. If this language feels new to you and you want to learn more, scroll down to find a few videos that dive a bit deeper into what it means to live those traits out in real life.
