Attitudes of the Kingdom
Horatio G. Spafford, a successful Chicago lawyer, lost most of his wealth in the financial crisis of 1873. He sent his wife and four daughters on a trip to France, but on their way, their ship was struck by another, and sank. Of 225 passengers, only 87 of them survived.
Mrs. Spafford was among the survivors, but the four daughters perished. As soon as she reached land, she telegraphed to her husband: “Saved alone. Children lost. What shall I do?”
Spafford left for France to join his wife and return her to Chicago. In the depth of this bereavement, he wrote his only hymn: It is Well With My Soul. Perhaps the words of the first stanza will take on new meaning for you, as you ponder them:
When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrow like sea billow roll;
Whatever my lot,
Thou hast taught me to say,
“It is well, it is well with my soul.”
The Church of the Beatitudes, the traditional site of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. The church is built as an octagon, symbolizing the eight beatitudes in Jesus’ sermon. The church, which overlooks the Sea of Galilee, was constructed in the 1930s.
beatitude — A genre of literary statements about blessings or happiness. The word comes from beati, the Latin for “blessed”; also called “macarisms” from the Greek makarios meaning “blessed.”
Blessed—Of the two words which our translators render “blessed,” the one here used points more to what is inward, and so might be rendered “happy,” in a lofty sense; while the other denotes rather what comes to us from without (as Mt 25:34).
God Blesses These Attitudes.
Attitude #1: Poor in Spirit. 3
Poor in spirit warns us immediately that the thought here is not (as it is in Luke 6:20) of material poverty. The phrase alludes to an Old Testament theme which underlies all the beatitudes, that of the ‘poor’ or ‘meek’ (‘ānî or ‘ānāw) who occur frequently in the Psalms and elsewhere (N.B. Isa. 61:1–2, alluded to in v. 4, and Ps. 37, alluded to in v. 5), those who humbly trust God, even though their loyalty results in oppression and material disadvantage, in contrast with the ‘wicked’ who arrogantly set themselves up against God and persecute his people. The emphasis is on piety and suffering, and on dependence on God, not on material poverty as such
Attitude #2: Mourn. 4
The penitent person who recognizes the weight of his or her sin and spiritual bankruptcy can only respond with sorrow. This has nothing to do with “feeling badly” over some unhappy event. This refers to the condition of the human heart. Only when we are truly sorrowful for our spiritual bankruptcy can the grace of God be introduced into the picture. It is through God’s grace that we experience great joy and the comfort of the forgiveness he offers
Attitude #3: Meekness. 5
Meekness is not weakness. Quite the opposite; it is “strength under control.” Southern horse breeders used to have a phrase—”the meekest horse wins the race.” The meek horse is the one who has most responded to his training. All his obvious and inherent strength is harnessed and brought under focused control. Moses was referred to as “more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth” (Num. 12:3). This is hardly a description of weakness when you consider the incredible personal strength required to lead over a million people on a camping trip through the wilderness for forty years.