Tuesday, January 4th, 2022
This first of the beatitudes Jesus taught at the Sermon on the Mount had always been one of those verses that sounded good to me but that I really didn’t understand. In March of 2019, I decided to do a bit of research to try to get a grasp of what Jesus probably meant.
Spirit means breath in Greek (pneuma) and in Hebrew (ruah) and in Latin (spiritus). In Genesis 2:7, God breathed into Adam and gave him life, so spirit means life.
Now the verse made sense to me. Blessed are those who are poor in their own life and rich in God’s life. As John the Baptist said about himself, “He must become greater; I must become less.”