I want to be "Blessed" like the beatitudes describe. I don't evaluate my life and see that I am "poor in spirit" or "meek" or "mourning". In fact I seem to be rather proud of my religious accomplishments, scathingly cynical, and fairly happy about it all. That's not really "Blessed" at all, not as Matthew 5:3-10 describes it. Part of my problem or fear actually stems from the acknowledgement that the dependent statements are almost all future tense verbs. I want my "cake" now, thank you very much.
That desire for present "blessings" was addressed by my Master, of course, and I do not really like the way He did it. He said that where my treasure is, there I will also find my heart (Matthew 6:21). My treasure may not be "money" or even "things" per se, but if my treasure is "comfort" or "happiness", it is the same problem. My heart is here and now, not in heaven. Perhaps that is the key, though, because if I mourned or became meek, or if I appeared to hunger and thirst for righteousness, my heart could still be here and now looking for those accolades of others; the status associated with appearing to be all these things.
There are some of the beatitudes that can't be faked. I'm not sure how I would fake "poor in spirit". I'm not sure how that could be pulled off because there is a core attitude involved that is directed at my Master. There is no faking out my Master. For the same reason it would be difficult to fake a pure heart, since if my heart were here instead of there, I would appear singularly focused here, not there, and would fool no one. Sure, I could create the illusion of some of them, but not all. It really comes down to where my treasure is stored.
Storing treasure in heaven means doing without here. I don't particularly like doing without in general, and do so for the rest of my life is not very appealing. But this is only true because I don't really understand or believe what I do understand about heaven. It can't be true if I truly believe that life in the presence of my Master will blow this life out of the water on the "blessing scale". Whatever else I claim, if that belief is true, if I really believe that life lived in the constant presence of my Master, constantly in prayer, constantly in corporate worship with the unnumbered horde before His throne, constantly at His service, seeing His face is my real future, then who cares what happens here. Let it burn.
But I do love my wife, and I love my daughter, and I love my stuff, and I love my air-conditioned house, and my beagles, and I don't want them to "burn". I can't leave them in the dust in pursuit of heaven; and rightly so, because even that pursuit is the wrong one. The right pursuit cannot have anything to do with myself or my condition. All I'm doing with the pursuit of "heaven" is substituting one selfish pursuit for another, and "blessing" it because it is "heaven". The pursuit is not to be before the throne, it is for the One on the throne. That's where poverty of spirit becomes real. That pursuit is where a heart becomes truly pure. The substance of my life should come from my pursuit of my Master.
Blessed the ones hungering and thirsting for righteousness, because they will be satisfied (Matthew 5:6). By the way, the word, "persecute" in this passage and in most of the Christian Scriptures also means "to pursue" so in a sense, I am to "persecute" my Master. But this desire for righteousness means that, as I wrote yesterday, I submit to the Spirit of my Master in each instance of my day, so that the imparted righteousness of my Master becomes the righteousness everyone sees in me. There will be no faking in that, only peace, gentleness, mercy to give, and mourning. But there will also be mercy received, comfort received, and, though I may not want it, the earth (the one "blessing" I'm so sure about – perhaps it refers to the "promised land" or something). I'll settle for my little piece of earth that makes up my yard.
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