Our Lenten series is on The Beatitudes.  How we read them makes all the difference in whether they are "good news" or "bad news."  A quotation from our series worship material reads:  "I always looked at the Beatitudes as a new set of laws to live by, like the Ten Commandments, only harder to keep.  Don't the Ten Commandments talk about outward behavior and the Beatitudes inner thoughts and feelings?"  If that's the case, there certainly isn't much comfort or good news in the beatitudes.  We are certainly no better equipped "to keep" them than we are the Ten Commandments. 

 

The Beatitudes, rather, are "blessings from God."  We are blessed by God's love and forgiveness, especially when we are "at our worst."  When we hear, really hear, that good news we can't help but respond.  We don't "have to" we "get to."

 

It's a little like a current country song, "I Get To" by Blue County: 

"They used to make me go to church clip-on tie, starchy shirt 

 I never heard the preacher's words all scrouched down in that pew

 these days goin' to church is somethin' I don't have to do. I get to."

 

It isn't "If I"  "then God,"  it's "Because God,"  "therefore I."  

What do you "get to do" this week because of what God has done for you?

 

Peace, 

 

Pastor Carol