Pilgr-image 05 - Poverty of Spirit
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. - Matthew 5:3
…through no choice of their own – they may urgently wish otherwise – poor people find themselves in a posture that befits the grace of God. In their state of neediness, dependence, and dissatisfaction with life, they may welcome God’s free gift of love. - Philip Yancey
Right before this quote, Philip Yancey quotes a writer named Monica Hellwig who had a list of ten "advantages" to being poor. The first of the list is "The poor know they are in urgent need of redemption." Yancey then takes the list and rewrites it twice over. The first, he substitutes "rich" for "poor" and changing each sentence to its opposite. For example, "The rich don't know they are in urgent need of redemption." His second rewrite substitutes "I" for the poor and changes each to a question in this way, "Do I know that I am in urgent need of redemption?" All three ways speak differently to me but each pushes me because, by most measures in the world, I am rich in comparison to the rest of the billions of people in the world and I have to be challenged to reflect on how I answer the rest of those questions. Here's the full list - do the same as Yancey did - read them over this way the first time, then rewrite them in the other two ways. Where does the Spirit speak to you through these?
The poor know they are in urgent need of redemption.
The poor know not only their dependence on God and on powerful people but also their interdependence with one another.
The poor rest their security not on things but on people.
The poor have no exaggerated sense of their own importance, and no exaggerated need of privacy.
The poor expect little from competition and much from cooperation.
The poor can distinguish between necessities and luxuries.
The poor can wait, because they have acquired a kind of dogged patience born of acknowledged dependence.
The fears of the poor are more realistic and less exaggerated, because they already know that one can survive great suffering and want.
When the poor have the gospel preached to them, it sounds like good news and not like a threat or a scolding.
The poor can respond to the call of the gospel with a certain abandonment and uncomplicated totality because they have so little to lose and are ready for anything.