Matthew 5:1-12 - by Don Neuendorf
"The Be-Happy Attitudes" That is how a famous preacher once described these verses. He could not have been more wrong.
Oh, it's true that if a person could be some of these things - meek, hungering for righteousness, merciful, pure in heart - that he would be blessed. But even if we're blessed it doesn't mean that we're happy.
In fact, that raises the question... "Is happiness really what we're after?"...
Do you ever get those little "floater" spots in your eyes? I do. Every once in a while I will notice a little dot that moves across my vision. If I try to look at it, it scurries away. Very weird. At first I worried about it. It was like the thing was alive. But I discovered that the only way to see it was to NOT look at it. If I looked straight ahead, it would stay still enough for me to examine it in my peripheral vision.
(I once installed a prank file on Pastor Wentzel's computer that did a similar thing. It opened a dialogue box that had a "close" button in it. But the button moved away when you tried to get close to it with the mouse.)
That's what happiness is like. (Yes, we're back on topic.) It is something that, if you pursue happiness itself, will always elude you. But happiness is discovered when you pursue other things.
So meekness, poverty of spirit, sympathetic mourning, righteousness, none of these things are comfortable or pleasant. Certainly none of them are directly related to happiness. And yet, as we become like Jesus we discover what real and lasting happiness may be.
Jesus' words are both an invitation, and a proclamation. Just as he says, "Take up your cross and follow me" even though we cannot do so perfectly. So he invites us to be all these things, but in the end it was he who would take up the cross. And it was he who would fulfill the Beatitudes. And it is he who will make us happy. Deeply, deeply, eternally, happy.