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

I have to keep reminding myself that the beatitudes aren’t really (or aren’t only) a list of desirable virtues that I have to aspire towards. They are a declaration by Jesus of what already is blessed. Of WHO already is blessed. They are people that Jesus saw and called out as worthy of love, grace, attention and presence.

If part of what Jesus was doing on earth was exposing God’s kingdom already present on earth (and our future hope), the beatitudes feel central to this. Tom Long says, “The Beatitudes proclaim what is, in the light of the kingdom of heaven, unassailably true.”¹

I have to wonder, who is it that Jesus saw as meek and called blessed? What were they doing, how were they living, that Jesus named them as “meek?” What does meekness look like today? Is it a wanted quality?

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I met a friend in January. He is someone who I think if Jesus had seen him would have said, “blessed is he, the meek.” My friend has this way about him, this calm, engaged but never striving presence. He described on several occasions how he prays for or wants to have a “lightness of spirit.” I love that phrase: “lightness of spirit.”

Sit with that for a second… what does a lightness of spirit mean?

The Greek word used for “meek” in Matthew 5 is praus. It can also be translated as “gentleness of spirit.” Maybe we could even say, a lightness of spirit.

One of the things I appreciated so much about my friend was also what frustrated me. We were in a group with pastors of small churches and were working together to think about why and how small churches flourish. We were given questions and everyone took turns answering. When it got to my friend, he would give these long, flowing, meandering answers that were only sort of about the question (that was the frustrating part — just answer the question!). Instead, he would talk about the people in his community. He would talk about the way they showed up for each other. He would talk about the love and connection he was part of. He smiled, laughed easy and was just “light.”

Blessed is my friend, because no matter the question or circumstance, he sees people. He is with people. He knows some virtue is less important than the person right in front of him. He is OK with who he is and how he is in the world.

What might it look like for you to stop trying to be good, and just try to be with? How does meekness or humility or a lightness of spirit invite us to be with people?

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May you be blessed with meekness today. May you be blessed with presence, with a light-presence, to connect with exactly who is in front of you. May you be blessed with a humility to be OK with who you are, and who you are becoming. May you be blessed with clarity to see what already is, what is already blessed, and delight in it. May you be blessed with patience for when things are not OK, to believe this is not the end. May you be blessed to not overlook the humble, those that are easy to miss. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

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1. Thomas G. Long, Matthew, Westminster Bible Companion (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997), 46. ↩︎