For Reading and Meditation:
Deuteronomy 30:1-20
We spend one last day meditating on the eighth and final Beatitude. Some feel that the verses which follow this Beatitude (verses 11,12) constitute a ninth Beatitude, but really they are an amplification of what our Lord has been saying in verse 10. It must be pointed out in passing that more is said about this eighth Beatitude than is said about the others - a fact that surely underlines its supreme importance. The question we ask ourselves today is this: How does this eighth Beatitude contribute to good mental and spiritual health? It does so by encouraging us to stand up and be counted. The famous missionary doctor and scientist Dr Albert Schweitzer, when addressing a group of medical men in Africa many years ago, is reported to have said: "You cannot be healthy unless you stand for something - even at a cost." The person who unashamedly identifies with Christ and stands up for Him, knowing that their stand will produce, in one form or another, inevitable persecution experiences an inner release from fear that affects every part of the personality in the most positive way. The positive may be persecuted, but they are also the most productive - they survive when others fall by the way. So stop wearing out your nervous system. Cease using up precious energy trying to find ways to make it through this world. Follow God's blueprint as laid out in the eight Beatitudes and yours will be a life which, through the psychology of Jesus, will bring you maximum effectiveness with minimum weariness. Choose any other way and you will experience minimum effectiveness with maximum weariness. I choose life.
Father, I, too, choose life. Help me to absorb and assimilate Your attitudes until they become my attitudes. Then life will always have to be spelt with a capital "L". With Your help, dear Lord, I'm on my way to real living. Hallelujah!