Follow
“Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful,
for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called children of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”
I have spent the last few weeks crying at inopportune times, leaking out something that’s been pent up in me for a few years now. It began when I was sitting at a coffee shop in Cincinnati, taking a short weekend vacation and being a tourist in my own state, sipping on a mocha and journaling. What struck me in that moment wasn’t anything new or monumental, but it hit me like an arrow to the heart: the only thing to do is follow Jesus. There is no other way. As I have battled and cursed all the poverty I’ve seen in the past months of my life, I felt that God was far off, that he had left me to figure this all out on my own. But what I felt at that coffee shop was not that God had left, but that I had followed my own will. I wanted justice the way I saw fit. I wanted a radical overturn, not a slow, plodding pathway. But as he spoke to me that morning, I began to realize: justice, as its own path, leads to death. It is only in following Christ that we also, as a byproduct, experience his justice.
When we follow Jesus, we follow him into his Kingdom, and his Kingdom is marked by the beatitudes. It is the poor in spirit, the mourning, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, the persecuted, the insulted. This is the valley that we follow Christ into; it isn’t a Kingdom of the mountaintops. When God reigns, he is looking for his people in the low places. We follow God not into wealth or power, but into living out his humility on earth. We live as poor and merciful, as ones who love righteousness and seek purity and become peacemakers. We are led into the valley not for a quick visit, but to create a home. In the Kingdom, it is the low places that bring us to the heights, and it is through this lowness that God, eventually, brings about his justice. But it is also in these places where God knits us together and heals us.
Following Jesus into this Kingdom valley used to sound like death to me. But it is actually a weaving together of all of life, an integration in our souls that allows us to be at peace. For a long time I saw life as a set of two paths, like in Robert Frost’s poem. I was always worried about choosing the one everyone else was choosing; I wanted to choose the one less tread. But in trying to choose that path, I narrowed myself, and created a breeding ground in my heart for resentment and anger. Why hadn’t everyone else chosen this path? Why did I have to do all the hard work? The vow I made to do hard things ended up being hollow: as it turns out, doing hard things for the sake of doing hard things is not where we find Christ, because it always leaves us waiting for the next thing. We find Christ when we let go of these paths, and choose him in the present — which, ironically, is often the hardest thing of all.
I keep coming back to this image of a golden path, which I now realize is just making the decision to take hold of and live my own life. The path unfurled before me now is a mixture of many things: marriage, parenting, ministry, friendship. But I have a choice on whether or not I live it all with Christ — if I let Christ invade each part of my life so that they begin to intertwine and become the same. For a long time, I saw marriage and parenting as divorced from ministry and following Jesus fully. I now realize what a lie this was. In all things we can follow Jesus fully, if we’re brave enough to say yes. In the end, following Jesus is exactly that: saying yes to him in all things, in all areas of my life, and putting him on the throne when I would rather be there myself.
But my tears these past few weeks mostly come as I remember my time housing refugees, and how I’m still healing from my time there. The main thing I’m realizing I’ve learned is that God will provide. I didn’t believe this at times. I didn’t always see it. But I chose to pray over every family I housed. I chose to fight despair as much as I possibly could, raging my worship and my petitions to God. I didn’t feel him providing in the moment, and I think in many ways I left that job feeling like a failure. But God never fails. For all the sleepless nights, I never saw a family get evicted. I never saw a family freeze or starve. But I also learned that, without Christ, sin is deep. The pulls of poverty and despair are extreme, and sin is much more than people doing bad things — it is a brokenness that stains every part of our world. Here, though, is the truth: God’s provision comes through partnering with us. He heals the world through our hands, and through our prayers. Saying yes to following Jesus is the only true way to say yes to justice, because it is only through the wounds of Christ that anything at all is healed.