The Beatitudes
Of The Empire
The Beatitudes
Of The Kingdom

Blessed are the rich and famous, for everything in the empire is theirs.
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are those who are funny, for they will be the life of the party.
Blessed are those who mourn [...]

John Dear
Open your Bible to Matthew 5 and you will never be the same. Gandhi and King called those passages the grandest manifesto of nonviolence ever written—beginning with the storied Beatitudes. Grand for a number of reasons—for their poignancy and conciseness, for their sheer poetics, for their morality and practicality. But grand, too, for a [...]

Stephen Said
Jesus turned to the ones on his left and he will say:
“Depart from me you who are accursed. For I was hungry, but you didn’t give me anything to eat. So we grew our own food, but we had to sell it into the international trading system, using the money to pay off our [...]

Step One!
Step One – Pray for the ones whose life’s no fun.
Step Two!
Step Two – If they’re abused, weep with ‘em too.
Step Three!
Step Three – Wait and see what help you can be.
Step Four!
Step Four – Talk right? Act right? All right? Sure!
Step Five!
Step Five – Be nice and kind to every child alive.
Step Six!
Step Six [...]

Mark Delaney
If I had to summarise the Beatitudes, this would be it. Jesus was speaking directly, I’ve come to believe, to a bunch of tired, worn-out, down-and-out, poor people. People a lot like our neighbours.
We’ve spent the last 14 years living in poor neighbourhoods in Delhi. In the last five years we’ve been in Janta [...]

Blessed are the lost and confused,
for admitting what the rest of us deny
Blessed are the paranoid,
for they will realise they were right all along
Blessed are those who are cursed by bad luck,
for their number will finally come up
Blessed are those willing to go the second mile,
for they will get a lift
Blessed are the welcoming and [...]

3God blesses those people who depend only on him.
They belong to the kingdom of heaven!
4God blesses those people who grieve.
They will find comfort!
5God blesses those people who are humble.
The earth will belong to them!
6God blesses those people
who want to obey him more than to eat or drink.
They will be given what they want!
7God blesses those [...]

I ran across a video clip today with Bono of U2 talking about and performing a song originally written back in the 80’s during the recording of Joshua Tree. Its about his experience visiting Ethiopia in 1984. Its a great song, and I love pretty much everything from U2. But what caught my attention was [...]

1. Blessed are they who love their partners more than any other person in the world.
2. Blessed are the husband and wife who continue to be affectionate and considerate.
3. Blessed are the husband and wife who are as respectful to one another as they are to their friends.
4. Blessed are the husband and wife who [...]

Stair-steps to Heaven
A Rhyme by Vicki Jones Cole
Step One……. Ask God’s help to get it done.
Step Two……. Cry boo hoo!
Step Three…. Get down on bended knee.
Step Four……. Hunger for goodness evermore.
Step Five……. Be kind to all alive.
Step Six………..Keep evil out of the mix
Step Seven…. Stop all fighting, child [...]

Marion E. Kinneman
(1895-1985)
Blessed are those parents who make their peace with spilled milk and with mud, for of such is the kingdom of childhood.
Blessed is the parent who engages not in the comparison of his child with others, for precious unto each is the rhythm of his own growth.
Blessed are the fathers and mothers who [...]

The Blessedness (of the Be-Attiudes) involves living a deliberately chosen life
which is not involved in the power and violence of the world, and which -
because of this fact – makes the ones living this sort of life
immensely vulnerable to being turned into victims.
The poor in spirit are poor relative to people
who might use the power [...]