Poor in Spirit

“Blessed is the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven.” Matthew 5:2

I find it interesting that Jesus starts with the poor in spirit and ends the beatitudes with those who are persecuted. All the rest are sandwiched in between, but the ones at the beginning and the end are the ones who inherit the Kingdom. Kinda like they are two faces of the same coin – the poor in spirit and the persecuted – theirs is the Kingdom.

The poor in spirit understand the persecuted. The persecuted understand the poor in spirit.

I hope it is clear that the point of this series is the everlasting hope we have in Christ. One of my favorite authors is Madeleine L’Engle. In one of her books, she alludes that in order to write about the True Light and how it shines you have to illumine the darkness. She writes that only a Christian author could go so boldly into the depths of darkness. Why? Because only a Christian man or woman has the way out and back to the light. I like this idea, but I have read dark books that never took me back into the light.

That’s not the point here. I don’t wish to drag you down and never lift you up. My insecurity as a writer makes me say it again. I only write the broken things to show the goodness of God and His True Light. I write to know, but I write to show and point the Light back to Christ. Personally, it would be so much easier if I loved to write about fruit or even baking, which delights me so.

******

Last year God expected me to follow without offering me any ease into the calling. We homeschooled to gain our daughter’s heart back. Once I followed Him, I realized the cost. Every day for many school days, my daughter and I fought just to get our school work done. Nothing was done in a cooperative spirit. And, we’d lost the life we’d built at home and school. She lost her friends, and I lost mine. She lost the freedom to attend school with other children, and I lost the freedom to do the things I didn’t realize where perks of motherhood, like cleaning house in peace. There is an isolation in homeschooling that is overlooked.

I wanted to give up every day. Every day I was tempted to lose my patience, scream, and yell. Some days I did.

The curriculum was challenging. I thought my daughter had ADHD, and she fought like she had oppositional defiance disorder. I really don’t know if she does or does not have it, as so many strange things happened over the course of a year. We were also transitioning homes.

I didn’t know anyone who seemed to support my decision to homeschool, although no one was openly against it. However, it seemed that even the homeschool families doubted it.

It was much like the dark night of the soul I’d had in my twenties, but the foundation on God was the one firm thing that kept me going and pressing on. The only reason why I kept going is I knew with certainty God called me to it.

I was without a doubt poor in spirit. Desperate for God.

Why was God leading me into a hard place? What good could come from such a dark time? If God wanted me to regain my daughter’s heart, then why wasn’t this schooling more fun? Where was the beauty that reaches us?

This didn’t just last the first part of the year. It was most of every day for 9 months. When it came time to decide for school for this year, I lamented the choice. Surely it was better to send her back to school, and surely nothing good had happened as a result of the year. Surely, I’d made a mistake?

But with all the lament in the world, I felt like He was saying, “Keep following me here.”

So at the beginning of this year, I pulled out my second student. I began to see tons and tons of fruit from my daughter.

Here’s a short list:

• Over the summer, she began to:
  • recognize how different friends make her feel. Some wound her up and made her not want to do the right thing, but others were calmer and made her feel peaceful.
  • listen and trust us again.
  • became obedient instead of defiant.
  • opened up to us.
  • relike people she had an active grudge against.
  • read her Bible and look for His words over her weary heart.
  • place Bible words as signs in her room to remind her what to do.
  • prayed.
• When it was time to start back to school, she did not fight me and was compliant.

Oswald Chambers said that, “This total surrender to “the love of Christ” is the only thing that will bear fruit in your life.” Now, I know it is true, because I sure did not bear any of fruit on my own. How gracious He was to give me any fruit at all! He could have called me to it with nothing to show for it, but He did not.

It’s very probable that I wrecked her for life in being normal in a public school environment. This was one of my fears, but her heart came back home.

Maybe the poor in spirit are always like prodigals looking for home, finding the kingdom of Heaven in our lowest and weakest places. Maybe its the humility of being poor that leads us to His gate, His heart, our home.

This post is one in a 31 day series of posts called, “Broken into Beautiful.” You may read all the posts in this series by clicking the graphic below.