The angry - and the poor in spirit

Providentially, just after I wrote that last blog post, on anger, I found myself copying over some notes that seemed to apply to the same subject.

(I keep a notebook in my purse, and every month or two, I go through it and copy the handwritten stuff there into a Word document on my computer.)

These notes are from a sermon preached by our deacon, Ryan Bradley, and I seem to recall he said he'd gotten a bunch of this from Dallas Willard. Anyway, it was on the Beatitudes, and it seems to me that it answers a bunch of my questions about what to do with anger. Here are my notes:

That it is safe to be a good person in the kingdom of God. You can afford to be a peacemaker – you don’t have to pay everyone back. You don’t have to do it out of vengeance and you don’t have to do it to protect yourself.

You can afford to be someone who restores relationships – it’s safe to do that in the kingdom of God.

The French embassy is sovereign territory of France, even though it’s on U.S. soil. We are embassies of the kingdom of God. Our very selves are sovereign territory of God’s kingdom.

We are also refugees – allowed into this new, benevolent, oh-so-foreign land and we have to learn to live by the laws of this new land.

“Poor in spirit” – if you’re needy, the kingdom of God is for you.

“Is Christianity a crutch?” “Yes, well, I happen to be a person who needs a crutch.”

We all need a crutch – just some of us are trying to wobble along on broken legs.

“The needy who know it.”  We aren’t the strong, whose lives God is just making better. We are the weak, who desperately need God constantly.

And so we can’t look down on others. They’re right where we are, right?

We are fundamentally the desperate – the ones who need God.