Blessed are the poor...

I mentioned Dallas Willard and his book The Divine Conspiracy in an earlier post.  I decided to read it again.  The book covers a range of topics, but this morning I was reading about his take on the beatitudes.  (This is the section of the bible where Jesus says “blessed are the poor in spirit…)  I say “his take” because he spends a good bit of time talking about how other people have interpreted the beatitudes, including different translations of the bible.  He mentions that some people have used this passage as the reason they have decided not to be a Christian.  Who wants to be poor and weak?  Willard points out that when Jesus delivered this message, he was in the midst of teaching and healing the poor and the weak, and those are the people he was speaking to.  He was not instructing people to be poor and weak in order to be blessed, He was speaking to the current availability of the kingdom of God through a personal relationship with Jesus, and that certainly includes the poor and the weak.  He wanted them (and us) to know that everything that was available to the religious elite of that time was available to them, too.  Willard isn’t finished yet.  He is about to take apart each of the beatitudes one by one.