The Sauntering Pilgrim

Many Christians rank the Beatitudes among their favorite scriptures, even if they don’t talk about them, or know them all, or appreciate what they mean, or accept them as true. It doesn’t help that we have two versions of them: Luke’s shorter, more original version (Luke 6:20-26), and Matthew’s longer, more edited one (Matt. 5:3-12). For example, Luke’s “Blessed are you who are poor,” in Matthew becomes “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” In Luke, Jesus speaks directly to the materially poor; in Matthew he seems to speak to a wealthier audience about those who are materially poor.

Theologians have long debated those differences, and you know what they say about theologians: if you laid them all end to end, they’d never reach a conclusion. So when God asks me one day about my attempt to clarify those differences, I expect I’ll start quoting Job, “See, I am of small account; what shall I answer you? I lay my hand on my mouth. I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know” (Job 40:4; 42:3). However, though I don’t know much, I suspect a lot, and here’s what I suspect about the Beatitudes.

I suspect the Beatitudes don’t have much to do with material wealth or poverty, our hunger for food or righteousness, our gains or losses, or how we are welcomed or rejected. I suspect they have more to do with what Jeremiah had in mind in a beatitude of his own. “Blessed are those who trust in the Lord,” he wrote. “They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit (Jer. 17:7-8).

The Beatitudes, I’ve come to believe, are not about outward conditions as much as they are about one’s inner condition. For example, it’s not money that’s the problem, it’s “the love of money” that’s “a root of all kinds of evil,” for “in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains” (1 Tim. 6:10).

The Beatitudes, whether in Luke’s gospel or in Matthew’s, are about the blessings that come in utter trust in God, in complete abandonment to God’s will. They are about the trust that allowed Mary, the mother of Jesus, to say in all her perplexity at the news of her pregnancy, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word” (Luke 1:38).

Henri Nouwen, one of the twentieth century’s great spiritual pathfinders, wrote, “Jesus didn’t say, ‘Blessed are those who care for the poor.’ He said, ‘Blessed are we where we are poor, where we are broken. It is there that God loves us deeply and pulls us into deeper communion with himself.” Whatever the outer condition in which we live, we are blessed in those places where we are broken, where we cannot provide what we need and hunger for, where we must place our trust in God and to God surrender our wisdom and control, even when the only thing we can see around us is the worst we can imagine.

In the early eighteenth century, French priest Jean-Pierre de Caussade wrote a little book called Abandonment to Divine Providence. It’s basic message to those who hunger for God’s blessings is to “let go and let God.” Do you doubt? Do you suffer? Are you anxious about life’s trials? The one sure solution to any spiritual difficulty, he wrote, is to abandon ourselves entirely to God by embracing the small, daily duties life imposes. Practice complete submission to the will of God in every situation, whether we are beginners or seasoned disciples. True abandonment, he wrote, is a trusting, peaceful, childlike surrender to the guidance of grace.

When I worked in publishing years ago and had to make a job change, I ended up with two offers that seemed equally good and equally challenging, and I realized I simply did not have the inner resources to make a good choice. So I decided to make the best choice I could, to trust God to be in the choosing, to trust that my decision was only a beginning, and to trust God’s direction in all that would follow.

While I believed I was making a choice about a career path in publishing, I realized later that God was leading me not to a publishing house but to a church congregation and eventually to seminary and parish ministry. At the place where I reached the limit of my discernment and clarity and was left only to trust God where I could not see, God blessed me with direction I could not appreciate until later.

Now here I’d like to offer a bottom line to your questions about the future, to your doubts, to your confusion or suffering, but I can’t. I have no pearl of wisdom to offer for your situation, no map that details the way ahead. All I really have to offer is an invitation to trust God, to abandon yourself to God’s providence. Recall a time when you reached your limit and had to let go and let God. Recall the blessings that came to you as a result. And make Mary’s prayer your own constant prayer. “Here am I, the servant of the Lord. Let it be with me according to your word.” ▪