When We Gather To Pray…
WE INHERIT THE EARTH.
“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” —Matthew 5:5
“Meek” isn’t a word that we often hear, and it’s a word we use even less. It means submissive, and that isn’t a quality that we idolize in others. We don’t fashion ourselves after people in this world who are meek and submissive. In our culture, and more importantly in our hearts, to be submissive is to be weak. And weakness, we are told, deserves pity and scorn.
But that’s not how God sees it.
Numbers 12:3 says, “Now the man Moses was very meek, more than all people who were on the face of the earth.” The Bible is identifying Moses, the one who led the Hebrews out of slavery in Egypt, as the most submissive man on the planet. No award show would have that as prize title. And yet in the eyes of God, that is a title worthy of great honor. In fact, God goes on to say that because Moses is meek, he is rewarded by being given special treatment by God. Because Moses is the most submissive man in the world, God will speak with him “mouth to mouth, clearly, and not in riddles, and he beholds the form of the Lord” (Num. 12:8). This is a blessing that not even the prophets received. To them, God spoke in riddles and dreams, and not clearly, person to person, or friend to friend. No, that blessing was reserved for Moses. Why? Because Moses was meek.
Why is meekness so important to God? Why does He so greatly esteem submission? Because that’s who Christ is. It’s part of the nature of God himself.
The Son of God relates to the Father in full and perfect submission. Jesus says of himself that he is “gentle and lowly of heart” (Matt 11:29). That doesn’t sound like a kingly role model. Where is the power? Where is the strength? Where is the heroic subjugation? We want him to lead with those characteristics, but he doesn’t. He leads with meekness.
Think of the song we’re sining this Advent season, Hark The Herald Angels Sing. There’s the line that says, “Mild he lays his glory by. Born that man no more may die.” His very mission to save us from our sins was staged through his mild nature. Because he was meek and submissive to the will of the Father, he took on the cross of our sin and shame. And it’s because he was meek that the Father then glorified the Son and gave him all of heaven and earth as his inheritance.
Meekness is something to be celebrated. A virtue of the highest order. It is the quality of Christ that we should seek to resemble this Christmas and every day of our lives.
So if you ever ask yourself, what am I getting out of this life, take a minute and consider this: what you get out of this life is not a result of what you give in this life; it’s the result of who you are in this life. The meek shall inherit the earth. Everyone else gets nothing.
Do you have the heart of Christ? Do you have the Spirit of Christ? If so, then his meekness is your meekness and his inheritance is your inheritance.
So let the meek gather to pray!
Join us this Sunday at 6pm for prayer, carols, cookies, and cocoa.