Thursday November 5, 2020 - Blessed in Suffering
“Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven. In fact, that is how they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” (Matthew 5:11–12)
Early in his ministry, Jesus gave the Sermon on the Mount. When he said who was blessed, it was not whom the people would have thought. They would have expected Jesus to say that the rich and the powerful were the blessed ones. But that’s not what Jesus said.
When we go through suffering and are insulted or persecuted, we do not feel blessed. We feel terrible. We feel rejected and forgotten by God. We wish it would end immediately. We feel the exact opposite of blessed.
Yet Jesus tells us that in our suffering and persecution because we belong to him, we are blessed. Our suffering and persecution is a reminder that we have a reward in heaven. We may not feel blessed now, but we are blessed beyond compare because one day we will see God face to face. We have been made righteous and have received mercy from God. All those blessings, give us a reason to rejoice in our sufferings. Our sufferings remind us that we are not yet home. We are in the great tribulation and will one day be taken out of it. Amen.
Our song for today is “Blest Are They” by David Haas