We hear it all the time. We hear it in church, in interviews with sports and movie stars and we often say it ourselves…..
“I’ve been blessed.” “We’ve been so blessed.”
But what does it mean? What does it mean to be blessed? Usually we associate it with plentitude. It means that we have a lot of something: money, property, health, talent. Certainly, in that sense things haven’t changed much over the past 2,000 years.
Ask any first-century Jew at the time of Jesus who the blessed people were in their community and they would have shared with you the conventional wisdom of the day —
Blessed are the ruthless, for they are wealthy.
And blessed are the wealthy, for they have lots of stuff.
Blessed are the Romans, for they have power.
And blessed are the powerful, for they get what they want.
Today we might add some blessings that are peculiar to our own time and place in history —
Blessed are the college-educated, for they get the good jobs.
Blessed are the attractive, for they get fawned over.
Blessed are the arrogant and the ignorant, the mean and the petty, the shallow and self-absorbed, for they get their own reality TV shows.
Every age and every culture has its own understanding of what it means to be blessed and they are all, surprisingly, similar. Almost all of them involve fame or power or wealth — or sometimes, all three.
Jesus takes all of this and stands it on its head. Jesus re-defines what it means to be blessed in the Beatitudes….Matthew 5:1-12.
My Commentary:
We use the word blessed so easily that it has almost lost its edge. We say it when things go our way, when life is comfortable, when success arrives right on schedule. In our common vocabulary, blessing has become shorthand for abundance — more money, more admiration, more control.
That assumption is not new. In Jesus’ time, people also believed blessing could be measured by visible success. Wealth meant God’s favor. Power meant divine approval. Security was proof that you were living right.
The logic was simple: if life is going well, you must be blessed.
Jesus dismantles that logic in the opening words of the Beatitudes. He does not tweak society’s definition of blessing — He overturns it. In Gospel of Matthew 5:1-12, blessing is no longer tied to what you possess or control. It is tied to who you are becoming.
The blessed, Jesus says, are the poor in spirit, the meek, the merciful, the peacemakers, the persecuted. These are not people who look successful by the world’s standards. They are often overlooked, underestimated, or dismissed altogether. Today Jesus says that the immigrants are the ones who are blessed by God. Jesus insists that they are the ones closest to the heart of God.
Why? Because blessing, in the kingdom of God, is not about winning. It is about belonging. It is not about standing above others. It is about being open enough to receive grace.
The Beatitudes tell us that God’s favor is not reserved for the impressive, the powerful, or the admired. It rests on those who know their need, who hunger for righteousness, who refuse to trade compassion for control.
In other words, Jesus redefines blessing not as a reward for success — but as a gift given in love, often in places the world would never think to look.
Do YOU at all “GET” what Jesus is saying in the Beatitudes or has the world so jaded our thinking?
THE SMILE ON MY FACE DOESN’T MEAN MY LIFE IS PERFECT. I JUST APPRECIATE WHAT I HAVE AND HOW GOD HAS BLESSED ME!
Do share today’s Message and have a discussion with the person who is blessed like you.
