In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.
God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a village in Galilee, to a virgin named Mary. She was engaged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of King David.
Gabriel appeared to her and said, “Greetings, favored woman! The Lord is with you!”
Confused and disturbed, Mary tried to think what the angel could mean.
We want a better life. We want security and peace of mind. We want to love and be loved. We want to believe that even our failures can work for good if we learn from them. Many of us want to become the person Jesus describes in the Sermon on the Mount, a person who loves his enemies, but when we look into our heart, we realize that not only do we not love our enemies, we don’t even love some of our family and friends.
The popular myths we believe are often the source of our failure. We’ve bought into ideas that initially looked reasonable, but ultimately were lies. Let’s consider one of the most destructive: the notion that we can bring about positive change in our life by our willpower.
Our culture is obsessed with the notion of overnight success. Hence the popularity of the lottery and shows like American Idol. Many of us even believe instant success can be attained in the spiritual realm. We hear the prosperity preachers quote Bible soundbites, and we conclude that God wants to make us healthy, wealthy, and successful. But the soundbites don’t tell the whole story. In this episode of Life in Christ, we will explore the lessons learned by of one of history’s most famous disciples.
Portions of the Sermon on the Mount are found in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. Below is a harmony of the two accounts that I prepared for use in a biography of Jesus I’m writing.
Reading this sermon in one sitting can be a tremendous soul training tool. I hope you will have the opportunity to spend some time this week prayerfully considering Jesus’s radical alternative to life in the rat race.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for it is to them that the kingdom of heaven belongs.
“Blessed are those who mourn, for it is they who will be comforted.
“Blessed are the meek, for it is they who will inherit the earth.
