Blessed Are The Poor

I've been reading Philip Yancey's book The Jesus I Never Knew. He mentions the phenomenon of God's partiality toward the poor and disadvantaged and includes a list of "advantages" to being poor composed by writer Monika Hellwig. I'm sharing them here.

1. The poor know they are in urgent need of redemption.
2. The poor know not only their dependence on God and on powerful people but also their interdependence with one another.
3. The poor rest their security not on things but on people.
4. The poor have no exaggerated sense of their own importance, and no exaggerated need of privacy.
5. The poor expect little from competition and much from cooperation.
6. The poor can distinguish between necessities and luxuries.
7. The poor can wait, because they have acquired a kind of dogged patience born of acknowledged dependence.
8. The fears of the poor are more realistic and less exaggerated, because they already know that one can survive great suffering and want.
9. When the poor have the Gospel preached to them, it sounds like good news and not like a threat or a scolding.
10. The poor can respond to the call of the Gospel with a certain abandonment and uncomplicated totality because they have so little to lose and are ready for anything.

Jesus said in Matthew 5:3: "Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." May we be poor in spirit......