Tag: Christian Blog

  • What Jesus Said. Part Two. Gospel According to Matthew.

    What Jesus Said. Part Two. Gospel According to Matthew.

    The First Words on the Hillside

    When Jesus walked up that Galilean hillside and began to speak, He wasn’t addressing religious insiders or spiritual elites. He was speaking to ordinary people — fishermen, labourers, parents, widows, the bruised, the curious, the sceptical. Some believed already. Some didn’t know what to believe. And some simply wanted to understand why this carpenter’s words carried such weight.

    Matthew records the very first extended block of Jesus’ public teaching in what we now call the Sermon on the Mount. These are not abstract theories. They are the first notes of a new kingdom — a kingdom Jesus said was breaking into the world through Him. And the opening lines, the Beatitudes, are Jesus’ own description of the kind of people God draws near to.

    What’s striking is how different His list is from what we might expect. Jesus does not begin with the strong, the sorted, the confident, or the spiritually polished. He begins with the ones we’d normally overlook.

    Blessed Are the Poor in Spirit

    Jesus’ first recorded words of teaching in Matthew are these: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:3, ESV 2007). It is a stunning place to start. To be “poor in spirit” is not to walk around feeling worthless; it is to recognise our need. It’s the opposite of self-sufficiency. It’s the moment a person admits, even quietly, I can’t fix myself.

    For anyone who has ever felt spiritually out of their depth, unsure, doubtful, or painfully aware of their flaws, Jesus’ very first blessing lands like a lifeline: God’s kingdom belongs not to the impressive but to the honest seeker. The doorway to God is lower than our pride but wide enough for our need.

    Blessed Are Those Who Mourn

    “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted” (Matthew 5:4, ESV 2007).
    Jesus does not skip over the realities of life. He doesn’t pretend pain isn’t real. Instead, He honours those who carry loss, regret, disappointment, or grief — the kind of emotion we often try to hide.

    In mourning, we sometimes assume God is far away. Jesus says the opposite. Mourning opens us to divine comfort. And this comfort is not about pretending everything is fine. It is God’s presence holding us when everything is not fine. For the seeker who wonders whether God cares about human suffering, Jesus’ words stand as His own answer: He draws close to the broken-hearted.

    Blessed Are the Meek

    Meekness is one of the most misunderstood words in Scripture. It does not mean weak or passive. In the Bible, meekness is strength that refuses to turn into aggression. It is power under control — the posture of someone who trusts God more than their own ability to force an outcome.

    “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth” (Matthew 5:5, ESV 2007).

    We live in a world where the loudest are often rewarded and the quietest overlooked. But Jesus says the earth, the renewed, restored creation God will bring, belongs to those who choose gentleness over domination. It’s an upside-down kingdom where the humble stand tall.

    Blessed Are Those Who Hunger and Thirst for Righteousness

    There is a hunger inside every human being that food cannot fill — a longing for things to be made right. We see injustice in the world, in our communities, even in ourselves, and something in us aches for goodness, fairness, wholeness.

    “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied” (Matthew 5:6, ESV 2007).

    Jesus affirms that this longing is not foolish; it is holy. And He promises satisfaction — not always immediately, not always in the ways we expect, but ultimately in Him. For believers, this becomes a deepening desire for God’s life to shape our own. For seekers, this longing is often the first sign that Jesus might be calling.

    Blessed Are the Merciful

    Mercy is costly. It means choosing forgiveness when resentment would be easier, compassion when judgment would feel justified. But Jesus says, “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy” (Matthew 5:7, ESV 2007).

    Mercy transforms relationships, softens conflict, and opens doors that bitterness slams shut. And the more we receive God’s mercy, the more able we become to extend it. Mercy is never wasted. Jesus promises that those who give it will experience it again — from God Himself.

    Blessed Are the Pure in Heart

    A pure heart is not a flawless one; it is a sincere one. It’s a heart not divided between pretending and reality. A heart that wants God more than it wants to appear spiritual.

    “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8, ESV 2007). People often say, “I wish I could see God more clearly.” Jesus gently answers, clarity grows in a heart that is willing to be open, honest, and undefended before Him. Purity brings vision. And the promise — “they shall see God” — is one of the most intimate invitations Jesus gives.

    Blessed Are the Peacemakers

    Finally, Jesus blesses the peacemakers — not the peacekeepers who simply avoid conflict, but the ones who step toward reconciliation.

    “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God” (Matthew 5:9, ESV 2007).

    To make peace is brave. It often requires listening when we’d rather argue, apologising when we’d rather defend ourselves, and seeking understanding when it would be easier to walk away. But this kind of work reflects God’s own heart. When we make peace, Jesus says we resemble our Father.

    Hearing Jesus for Ourselves

    The Beatitudes are not a list of spiritual achievements. They’re not a set of hoops to jump through. They are a portrait of the kinds of people Jesus blesses — the kinds of people He draws close to and calls His own.

    And here is the remarkable thing: these blessings are often found not in our strengths, but in our struggles. In our honesty. In our longing. In our weakness.

    For believers, this passage reminds us that Jesus meets us where we truly are, not where we wish we were. For seekers, it shows a Jesus who speaks directly to human experience — to grief, humility, longing, and hope — long before He ever asks anything of us.

    This is where Matthew’s Gospel begins its record of Jesus’ teaching. Not with demands, but with blessings. Not with religious systems, but with a new vision of life under God’s care.

    And if these are His first public words, then maybe they’re meant to slow us down and help us listen — really listen — to the One whose voice has reached the ends of the earth without ever needing a microphone.

    This the end of the series. If you want to know why read, Coming Clean. Total Transparency. https://istruthintheway.org/?p=1271

    Leave a comment

    This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

  • Which Story Do You Prefer?

    Which Story Do You Prefer?

    Life of Pi, God, and The Universe.

    At the end of Yann Martel’s breathtaking novel and film, Life of Pi, two Japanese officials sit by the hospital bed of a young man who has survived 227 days adrift in the Pacific Ocean. They have come to understand how the Tsimtsum, their company’s cargo ship, sank. Pi tells them an incredible story: a tale of sharing a lifeboat with a zebra, an orangutan, a hyena, and a magnificent Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. He speaks of carnivorous islands, transcendent storms, and a relationship of terrifying co-dependency with the great beast.

    The officials, unsurprisingly, do not believe him. Their faces are etched with polite disbelief. “We need a story that we can believe,” they say. So, Pi offers them another. A story without animals. In this version, the lifeboat carries Pi, his mother, the ship’s brutish cook, and an injured sailor. It is a grim, horrific account of human depravity—of murder, cannibalism, and desperation. It is a story of mere survival, stripped of all wonder.

    After a long silence, he looks at the men and asks a simple, profound question. “So, tell me, since it makes no factual difference to you and you can’t prove the question either way, which story do you prefer?” The lead official, after a moment, quietly answers, “The one with the tiger. That’s the better story.” Pi looks at him, a gentle understanding in his eyes, and replies, “And so it is with God.”

    Story One: A Universe That Sings.

    This choice, presented in a quiet hospital room, is the fundamental choice we all face when we look out at the cosmos. We are presented with two grand narratives about where everything came from. The first is a story of intimate intention, the one found in the opening pages of Genesis. It doesn’t begin with a chaotic explosion, but with a divine word. “Let there be light.”

    In this account, the universe is not a cosmic accident; it is an intentional act of artistry. A Creator speaks reality into existence, separating darkness from light, waters from sky. The story builds with a poetic rhythm, and at the end of each creative day, a beautiful refrain echoes: “And God saw that it was good.” This is not the assessment of a detached engineer checking his work. It is the deep, resonant satisfaction of an artist beholding his masterpiece. Goodness and beauty are not happy by-products; they are woven into the very fabric of existence from the first moment.

    The climax of this story is not the formation of distant galaxies or blazing suns, but the creation of humanity. We are told we are made in God’s own image—Imago Dei. In this narrative, our existence is the point of the story. Our lives have inherent meaning because we were conceived in the mind of a loving Creator before the foundations of the world were laid. It is a story that tells us we belong here. It is a story that sings with purpose.

    Story Two: The Unceremonial Goodbye.

    The second story is the one told by modern naturalism. It begins not with a word, but with a singularity—an infinitely dense point that explodes in a Big Bang. It’s a story of magnificent scale, of forces and particles, of 13.8 billion years of cosmic evolution. It is, in its own way, a stunning account. But philosophically, it is the story of the hyena and the cook. It is a story of survival of the fittest, of a “blind, pitiless indifference.” It is a worldview that Pi was taught as a boy in the most brutal way imaginable.

    As the son of a zookeeper, the young, spiritually curious Pi saw a soul in the animals. He saw wonder. His rational father, Santosh, saw a dangerous naivety. To teach his son a lesson in cold, hard reality, he had a goat tied to the bars of the tiger’s cage and forced Pi to watch as Richard Parker tore it apart. As Pi reeled in horror, his father delivered the core tenet of this second story: “That tiger is not your friend! When you look into his eyes, you are seeing your own emotions reflected back at you. Nothing else.”

    This is the universe of pure naturalism in a single, visceral lesson. A universe without a soul, where any meaning we perceive is merely our own reflection staring back at us from a cold, empty reality. And for Pi, this lesson was proven in the most heartbreaking way possible at the end of his journey. After 227 days of shared ordeal, after surviving the impossible together, he collapses on a Mexican shore. The tiger, his companion in suffering, walks to the edge of the jungle, pauses, but doesn’t look back. He simply vanishes. “What hurts the most,” the older Pi tells the writer, “is not taking a moment to say goodbye.” It was unceremonial. In the end, Richard Parker was exactly what his father said he was: an animal. An uncaring force of nature.

    That is the universe of the Big Bang, beautifully and terribly illustrated. It may be awesome and powerful, but it feels nothing for you. It does not know you exist. The love you feel, the meaning you seek—these are, in this story, one-way projections. The universe travels with you for a time, but in the end, it walks into the jungle without a word.

    The Story That Haunts Us.

    So, we are left with a choice. One story gives us a universe that knows our name, crafted with love and infused with goodness. The other gives us a universe that came from nothing and cares for nothing. One story says beauty is a clue, a signpost pointing towards the divine Artist. The other says beauty is an evolutionary trick, a fleeting reflection of our own emotions. Pi’s story with the tiger is filled with unimaginable suffering, but it is never meaningless. God is always there, watching. Even when Pi feels abandoned, he later understands that God “gave me rest and gave me a sign to continue my journey.” The story of the cook is just suffering—brutal, pointless, and ugly.

    The story with the tiger—the story with God—doesn’t promise an easy life. It promises that the journey, with all its terrors and wonders, has a purpose. It promises that you are not alone in the boat. The other story promises nothing. Both require faith. It takes faith to believe in a loving Creator you cannot see. It also takes faith to believe that the intricate order of the cosmos and the deep consciousness within your own mind are the result of a random, unguided accident.

    So, which story do you prefer? The one taught by Santosh with a goat and a cage, confirmed by an unceremonial goodbye on a lonely beach? Or the one that whispers of a loving Creator, of a universe that sings, and of a beauty that is more than just a reflection of our own eyes?

    And so it is with God.

    5 responses to “Which Story Do You Prefer?”

    1. Christopher Francis Avatar
      Christopher Francis

      Hi Jo. You did a fantastic job with this post and I really enjoyed. The contrast between the stories we get to choose from are so stark and distinct it would seemingly make no sense for someone to choose Story 2. “This is not the assessment of a detached engineer checking his work. It is the deep, resonant satisfaction of an artist beholding his masterpiece. Goodness and beauty are not happy by-products; they are woven into the very fabric of existence from the first moment.” These statements are very well put. Great job.

      1. Jo Blogs Avatar
        Jo Blogs

        Hi Christopher,

        Thank you for such a fantastic comment, I’m so glad you enjoyed the post! Please forgive the delay in my reply; I’ve been a bit distracted by the weather here and have only just logged in and seen your message.

        It’s wonderful to hear that the contrast between the two stories struck a chord. The inspiration for the piece came so suddenly. I saw the film was on a streaming deal, and as a long-time fan, I bought it and watched it again. Literally, the second the credits rolled, I knew I had to write about that final, profound choice. I rushed to my computer to get the notes down and wrote the post the very next morning.

        Thank you again for your kind words. Knowing that the content and the way it was written connected with you is incredibly encouraging. It means a lot!

        Jo

        1. Christopher Francis Avatar
          Christopher Francis

          Good day Jo. No problem on the delayed reply. I have never seen the film but I may watch it soon if I can. Contrast is a great tool to use in writing when it is done well. I use it quite a bit myself, though maybe differently then the writer of the Life of Pi. Also, thanks for subscribing to my blog. I hope you enjoy my writing and it blesses you. Cheers.

        2. Jo Blogs Avatar
          Jo Blogs

          Hi Christopher. I tried twice to leave a comment on your poem Misery-Maker but GoDaddy’s firewall blocked it twice (normal connection and VPN).
          I just wanted to let you know in case the firewall settings need adjusting.
          The piece really spoke to me; I’d love to share my thoughts once it lets me through.

        3. Christopher Francis Avatar
          Christopher Francis

          Hi Jo. Thanks for reading. I had no idea the firewall was blocking comments. I apologize for your trouble. I am looking at it now and will you let know when I have fixed the problem. Regards.