¨Blessed are the poor in spirit¨

I’ve always had a little bit of trouble with the sermon on the mount, understanding the beatitudes. The poor in spirit.  Why is theirs the kingdom of heaven? I think I’m starting to get it. This along with the rest of the beatitudes are the topics of the talks for the youth group camp where we will be helping this coming week. Elizabeth and I will be speaking on the poor in spirit and those who mourn during one of the days. We will be speaking about how the road to our receiving true joy begins many times with a broken-heart and spirit.  Realizing that we on our own we don’t measure up and that we are in need of a savior. Realizing that like the rich young man of Matthew 19, we can’t earn our way into God’s kingdom by our own good works, or merits, or riches.

As I thought about this topic on a walk outside of the city, a nearby cow left his group of friends to come over and check me out and see what I was up to. I took his picture and decided to make him the featured photo in this blog update.  I’ve found that I like taking pictures and so I plan to rather frequently post photos and thoughts about various things as I go about here in Chile.

This morning at 4AM we will drive about 10 hours to the south to the isolated camp grounds where about 80 youth from various churches will be gathered. When I get back to having internet access I will share more.

Saludos,

Philip