January 21

Text: Matthew 5:3

 "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” (NASB)

Poverty is an affliction some never escape, and some never know.  No one chooses to be born into poverty, and no one chooses to be born into prosperity.  Please know there is an enormous difference in seeing poverty and being poor.  The relatively few who are born into true poverty yet escape their poverty commonly had someone who produced the opportunity to escape.  Though that person had to apply himself/herself earnestly, someone else provided the opportunity.

There is a form of poverty that afflicts everyone regardless of culture, geography, or available money.  It is the inescapable spiritual poverty inflicted by evil.  A person will not seek to escape this poverty until he/she realizes this poverty exists and is destroying him/her.  In evil’s poverty, the victim is convinced “the next desired thing or experience” will produce an enduring satisfaction.  However, either the anticipated never occurs, or the anticipated becomes disappointment.  The anticipated, with time and experience, becomes just one more reason to be disillusioned and disappointed.  The longer one lives the more futile grasping becomes.

The following becomes increasingly evident: “I am not my own answer to futility.  I can try hard, but I cannot provide myself opportunity.  Trying will never, of itself, be enough!”

Were that the end of the story, life would be doomed to be a dismal adventure.  The good news: A universal opportunity exists for all.  Its source is not human.  It is free.  However, the first step involves recognizing and admitting need.  The answer is found in being ruled, not in being ruler.

Suggestion for reflection: “Are you willing to be a subject in order to locate a good, enduring direction that reaches beyond physical existence?”  (Read Jeremiah 10:23, 24 and Romans 11:33-36.)