Blessed are the meek

Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the earth.
Matthew 5:5 (NIV)

As I continue this process through the Beatitudes the challenge continues because the words that Jesus speaks continue to defy logic, or so it may seem. It causes me to initially rebel again and again. Again Jesus bombards the thought of by challenging me to understand how one who is meek will become great and it makes me think of the story of the workers in the vineyard in Matthew 20. We are all called to the work of God and there will be those who are bold and step forth and do all the work from early on and there will be those who are fearful, those who have nothing and come in with heaviness and will step into grace in the end, but will receive the same as those that have been there all along. The fact is that pride can be the downfall of believers.
What do I mean by this? There are those believers in the world that are bold in their faith, but sometimes their boldness stands as a stumbling block to others. I’m sure that most everyone has known such a Christian. The Christian who stands in a strong self-righteousness because he feels that he has been so faithful and will quickly call out others in their flaws, I’m sure that most of us can pick out one or two Christians like this and some of us might even be guilty of that ourselves. Matthew 20:16 (NIV) says, “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.” The problem with this self-righteous pride is that it causes others to stumble and poses the danger that the works that you do become the defining factor of your faith, but the reality is that Christ is the only one that can save anyone and the work has been done.
The Message version of Matthew 5:5 reads this way, “You're blessed when you're content with just who you are--no more, no less. That's the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can't be bought.” That is the essence of meekness, not feeling that anything is deserved or owed, but feeling blessed with the life that you have been given. When we come to God with that thankful heart it can slowly change in us the desire to possess more things and make us more desirous of the relationship that we can have with Jesus Christ, the only one that can bring us salvation and has given us all that we should ever need. No one has ever been satisfied by anything that can be bought because the moment that you possess those things something bigger and better comes along. The only cup that fulfills all desires is the one poured out on us in the blood of our Lord, so when we come as meek wretches acutely aware of how wretched we truly are we can find that we have been given everything.