Willard Wednesdays

The Divine Conspiracy: Chapter 4 Who is Really Well Off?  - The Beatitudes  (p. 123-125)

Uh oh, it's bad, when you look at your own blog and only find your weekly Willard posts!  I have much else I'd like to share in writing and no time to do so...that's a problem!  I will attempt a little more variety in the future between Wednesdays.  :)

I am blogging through The Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard.  It's been a pivotal book for me as I seek a renewing of my mind (Romans 12) and a more fully formed Kingdom of God worldview.  

Some quotes today from Willard who spent the last part of chapter 4 writing about the "hopeless blessables".  

"Blessed are the physically repulsive, Blessed are those who smell bad, the twisted, misshapen, deformed,, the too big, too little, too loud, the bald, the fat, and the old- For they are all riotously celebrated in the party of Jesus."

Willard goes on to write about others we tend to disqualify:

"The flunk-outs and drop-outs and burned-outs.  The broke and the broken.  The drug heads and the divorced.  The HIV positive and herpes ridden.  The brain-damaged and incurably ill.  The barren and the pregnant too-many-times or at the wrong time.  The overemployed, the underemployed, the unemployed.  The unemployable.  The swindled, the shoved aside, the replaced.  The parents with children living on the street, the children with parents dying in the "rest" home.  The lonely, the incompetent, the stupid.  The emotionally starved or emotionally dead.  And on and on and on."

"Is it true that Earth has no sorrow that Heaven can't heal?  It is true!  That is precisely the gospel of heaven's availability that comes to us through the Beatitudes.  And you don't have to wait until you are dead.  Jesus offers to all such people as these the present blessedness of the present kingdom- regardless of circumstances.  The condition of life sought for by human beings through the ages is attained in the quietly transforming friendship of Jesus."

"If I, as a recovering sinner myself, accept Jesus' good news, I can go to the mass murderer and say, 'You can be blessed in the kingdom of the heavens.  There is forgiveness that knows no limits.'  To the pederast and the perpetrator of incest.  To the worshiper of Satan.  To those who rob the aged and weak. To the cheat and the liar, the bloodsucker and vengeful:  Blessed! Blessed! Blessed!  As they flee into the arms of the Kingdom Among Us."