1/11/15Advantages to Being “Poor in Spirit” from Matt. 5:3

Taken from Philip Yancey’s The Jesus I Never Knew

–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 exaggerate, 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.