Try It And See

What of the promises of God?

As I’ve been reading and studying to preach Matthew 5:1-12 this coming Sunday, I came across this reflection on when the promises of God’s favor upon his people will come true.

"…the clue comes in the next chapter, in the prayer Jesus taught his followers. We are to pray that God’s kingdom will come, and God’s will be done, ‘on earth as it is in heaven’. The life of heaven — the life of the realm where God is already king — is to become the life of the world, transforming the present ‘earth’ into the place of beauty and delight that God always intended. And those who follow Jesus are to begin to live by this rule here and now. That’s the point of the Sermon on the Mount, and these ‘beatitudes’ in particular. They are a summons to live in the present in the way that will make sense in God’s promised future; because that future has arrived in the present in Jesus of Nazareth. It may seem upside down, but we are called to believe, with great daring, that it is in fact the right way up.

Try it and see."

(from Matthew for Everybody, by N.T. Wright)