Brian's Brilliant Blurbs for May 11th (Joshua 3-4, Matthew 5-7)

This morning I read the Sermon on the Mount and was felt compelled to do some research on the Beatitudes. It ended up with God revealing some amazing things to me about how things change. Specifically I ended up looking at Matthew 5:5 “Blessed are the meek: for the shall inherit the earth.” I had associated the word meek with the modern negative definition of the word. The definition of meek according to the Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary is:

1. Enduring injury with patience and without resentment: MILD
2. Deficient in spirit and courage: SUBMISSIVE
3. Not violent or strong: MODERATE

I saw meek as a combination of the 2nd and 3rd definitions or more specifically: as being weak. Being followers of Christ, the 1st should fit us all. Not being violent, that too. But being deficient in spirit, in courage, not being strong? But I then went to the 1812 definition and before I show it to you, It pointed me to two other verses in the Bible where meek is used to describe someone.

Numbers 12:3 Now the man Moses was very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the earth.
Matthew 11:29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me: for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.

I don’t know who would call Moses or Jesus as being deficient in spirit or in courage or for that matter as not being strong. Now the 1812 Webster’s definition is:

1. Mild of temper; soft; gentle; not easily provoked or irritated; yielding; given to forbearance under injuries.
2. Appropriately humble, in an evangelical sense; submissive to the divine will; not proud, self-sufficient or refractory; not peevish and apt to complain of divine dispensations.

The 1812 definition gives a completely different meaning to the word mild and much more appropriate to these verses. But if you go just a little bit further, you find that the word meek in the Bible is translated from the Greek word “praos” which means “becoming tamed, as a wild animal is tamed” suggesting “a capacity for going against all natural resentfulness and passion and anger.” This suggests that the meek have an inner strength to resist our worldly responses and reactions. And this goes with much of what Jesus is teaching us in the rest of the Sermon on the Mount. That we need to be able to turn the other cheek. That we need to love our enemies. These things need strength and the meek do have that strength. The world wants us to think being meek is a weakness but it is a strength.

Have a blessed and wonderful day.