The kingdom of heaven is a beautiful phrase to hear, a beautiful goal to seek. An idea of heaven is a central part of Christianity. Each Christian attempts to obey the words and laws of God. The reward for this obedience is heaven. Within our spirituality heaven has an important place. The Beatitudes in St. Matthew's gospel present a certain spirituality of fairness and social justice as taught by Jesus Christ. The language is beautiful to read. It is easy to meditate on these Beatitudes for hours. Learning how to live them is a little more difficult but a certain behavior pattern is presented.
Being Christian often means letting go of some conveniences, letting go of some ideas, letting go of some sins. Being Christian often involves some form of sacrifice, involves doing something just because their is a true, honest need. Each day there are opportunities to do good, to live the Beatitudes. Each day each Christian struggles to do the right thing. From each struggle the body of the church grows stronger, from each struggle the individual Christian can grow stronger in faith, stronger in love with God, stronger in love with all humans.
Both the Ten Commandments and the Beatitudes are there to guide people on the correct path to God. Both direct those who follow and obey the words to a special type of enlightenment, unencumbered with desire for pleasures of the flesh, a special type of love for God, for self, and for other human beings. When a person learns to live without selfishness, without greed, without envy, without malice the world will appear differently.
At one time or another we all will need to have mercy in our lives. Either a colleague or a friend will need us to show our mercy, our compassion or we will need it from someone. This society provides each member with different levels of status and power based upon wealth and other variables. God does not see the different levels. We are all his children. He requests that we ignore the differences and treat each other with respect, with love.
Heaven waits for those with humility, obedience, charity. With patience and the guidance of Holy Bible and other good books, our spirituality will allow us to live lives of righteousness, will allow each day to be a reason to rejoice in the wonder and mystery of God, will allow each Christian to discover those who are Blessed and living among us.
We live in a visual time. We live in a verbal time. Our society is filled with special effect laden movies. We have come to expect all types of sound bites from politicians. We have come to expect all types of speeches. We are prepared for everything to be taken out of context, to be deconstructed.
We live in age of dreams, an age of commercials in glorious living color on television, on the internet, and in the cinema before the latest special effects move in 3 - D starts. Yes, we all have dreams.
Isn't time that someone takes the time to breathe, and to say, "I have a prayer."
The Beatitudes are the perfect path to use to follow Christ, to find your way into daily prayer and reflection.
"I have a prayer..."
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