Movement 3 (Beatitudes)

Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth.

Filled with the gratitude of our lives re-enlivened within us, we walk in simple appreciation and ebbing regret. We have been found. We found ourselves with someone and something bigger than ourselves to which we can completely give our true selves. God’s words are true: I will never leave you or betray you. Jesus spoke them, lived them, and lives them now.

We are humbled and have unyielding desire. We remember our own despair and now live the hope of being renewed daily; our destruction and being recreated; our darkness and living now in daily enlightenment; and our walking death while living, now living courageously in the face of death. We are living fully in the tragedy all about us. God redeems us and restores us to who we are made to be. I am shown who I am to be. I desire to do good and in humility offer myself to God. I am willing to give myself in service to the God who has done for me what I could never have done for myself: I tried. 

I am restored to life, desire, and passion. I find myself trusting. I have been meeked and I am strong in Him with hope. I wish to listen and do as He speaks and wishes. I listen to God in prayer, His Word, others, experiences, and what He reveals to me. As He has seen into me, I am willing to be seen into by others, and I wish to see into others hearts. I have become able for intimacy. I am beginning to see and know that He wishes me to love as I have been loved. 

Others have begun to trust me again. They find me to be someone trustworthy, one who gives himself to whatever is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, or admirable. I am in all of my “mistake-riddenness” being rendered authentic.  From the outside of me through the heart, to the other side of me, it is all the same material. By continuous confession I keep this growing integrity. I have been given the gift of passion, a willingness to be in pain for a purpose. I have been given the gift of intimacy, the ability to be known in heart and to know others. I have been given the precious gift of integrity, so that even alone I am the same man as when I am with others. 

I walk upon the earth in liberty, wishing to serve, tend, make, create, shape, produce, and benefit. I have been blessed with a purpose in this life. Others, I find, depend upon me to live this life. The question we ask ourselves daily is, “Am I living truthfully?” 

The words of Paul speak now as never before: “But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord….” Philippians 3:7-8