Blessed Are The Poor

There are many ways of being poor. One of the most com­mon forms is called “mid­dle class broke” — people that have all sorts of stuff but not enough cash on hand to put gas in their car or buy a ham­burger. It is a frus­trat­ing form of poverty because it looks like they have money — when in fact they mostly have debt. Some are quite well off finan­cially, but they won­der if peo­ple relate to them only because of their money. This too is a form of per­sonal and social poverty. One of the com­monly heard terms these days is “the work­ing poor” — a notch below mid­dle class broke but with forms of assis­tance that often ham­per more than help in their finan­cial struggles.

The rea­son all of these peo­ple are blessed is because they all have a rea­son to pray. No mat­ter how much or lit­tle we have, there is that lit­tle voice within that reminds us of our depen­dence. Money is only as good as the gov­ern­ment behind it. It can turn into mean­ing­less paper in a sin­gle day. Money can­not buy health. Your genet­ics are more pow­er­ful than any med­ical sys­tem — no mat­ter how advanced. The more you have, the more you feel a need to share. That too can be an exhaust­ing bur­den of poverty.

The great­est poverty is wor­ry­ing about what we have. It robs our souls over things that rust. Prayer works well here too. I pray for detach­ment. No one appre­ci­ates nice things more than I do. With a lit­tle spir­i­tual dis­tance, I have learned to have it all by hav­ing rel­a­tively lit­tle. It is an enrich­ing per­spec­tive. Poverty is more a state of mind than an actu­al­ity. Spirit can com­pen­sate beyond what any bank can hold.

Once you real­ize your form of poverty, your spirit kicks in and you become rich. The “King­dom of God” becomes yours. The taste of the eter­nal is attached to the bit­ter­ness of life’s disappointments.