“You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule.
“You’re blessed when you feel you’ve lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you.
“You’re blessed when you’re content with just who you are—no more, no less. That’s the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can’t be bought.
“You’re blessed when you’ve worked up a good appetite for God. He’s food and drink in the best meal you’ll ever eat.
“You’re blessed when you care. At the moment of being ‘care-full,’ you find yourselves cared for.
“You’re blessed when you get your inside world—your mind and heart—put right. Then you can see God in the outside world. Matthew 5:3-8 (MSG)
Jesus gave these principles to a crowd of people sitting on the hillside. He was trying to explain how God saw things. This would still apply to us today.
We are so trained to make everything look good on the outside. We want people to see us as successful, financially stable, no problems at all. We only let people see what we want them to see, the good stuff. We hide the problems, the sadness and the messiness of our lives from everyone because we want people to approve of who we are.
But Jesus said in this sermon that all that messiness, all the stuff we are trying to stuff on the inside is the good stuff. It's in that messiness, in that chaos that God works. God doesn't care what we look like on the outside. He wants us to take a good look at what he can see on the inside. That's the good stuff. That is the stuff that will give your life meaning.
So, when you are at the end of your rope, when you feel like you've lost everything, when you just don't care anymore what people think -- then you are blessed. Because it's during the chaotic, messy, down-right scary times in life that God shows up and heals your heart.