What Can Blindside You, Can Take You Out Before You Even See it Coming? This Can

You can get one so cheap.  And it tastes so good.   It’s still just $5.00 (I checked - just look for the Classic - it's still there)  Well, $5.30 if you count in the tax, but still.   That’s a deal!   But let me tell you, you eat one of those suckers every day or even every week, it could cost you a lot more than five bucks.  But just like the quarterback tackled on the blindside, you may not see it coming.  But then you go to the scale and see the damage.  Or worse, you go to the doctor and get the bad news.  Or worse yet, your heart seizes up in agonizing pain, and you know.  Something has gone very, very wrong.   That pizza can blindside you even worse than that poor quarterback is getting in the picture. 

You see.  I used to love Little Caesar’s $5.00 pizzas, but now not so much, and even more not so much after they started giving you the calories, over 2200 calories in that little pizza!  And of course, that tells you nothing about the fat or the cholesterol or the fact that it hardly has any nutritional value at all.

Yet go figure, people still buy them… a lot.  They make over 3 million pizzas every day.  And why?  Well, it does fill you up.  And all that fat and salt fills you with a sense of satisfaction too.   But let’s not pick on Little Caesars.   You can pick your poison so to speak.  Every time I go into Publix, I still have to pull myself away from their delicious Fried Chicken (by the way you have almost 2800 calories in that 8-piece carton of greasy delight.)

All those foods that taste so good yet can be so bad, we Americans eat a lot of them.  And it’s wrecking us by the thousands, even the millions.   But if food isn’t what you choose to wreck you, to blindside your life; you have all sorts of other choices.   You can look towards success or money or things or pleasing others or the love of your kids or spouse or even religion.   Those things aren’t bad.  In their place, they’re good.  But if you look for them to fill you up, well, that’s when things go seriously wrong.   You’re asking of those things what they can never give.   Yet folks still do it.    

People think fulfillment comes from having something.  How many of us, when we’re really honest, think that?  You think. If I had a better job or a more understanding spouse.   If I had less financial stress or greater success.  If I gained more peace or had less worries.  If I had a more positive self-image.  The list goes on and on.  Think about it.  Are there times that you think, if only this changed, then fulfillment would be one step closer.  

Some folks never give up.  They keep chasing the dream.  But along the way, a lot of folks get another message.  Fulfillment isn’t coming now or ever.  The whole fulfillment thing, it’s a big con.  Now, you may not think those words, but you can feel them.   You can sense them deep inside.  And as that message grows, it infects you in ways you hardly realize.    

A friend betrays you, and you become less trusting of everyone.  A leader disappoints you, and you begin to doubt that any leader exists who will do the right thing.  You take a risk and you fail, and you think, I’m never risking like that again.  And in its own perverse way, this sort of message, you think.  It does fulfill me.  It protects me.   It even makes me wise.  But it’s not. It’s blindsiding you.  And if you let it, before you know it, this message will bring you down.  It will wreck you.  It will take you away from ever experiencing the fulfillment that truly does exist.  And how does that fulfillment come?  Here Jesus shows you the way.   Let’s listen to what he has to say.    

Matthew 5:3 - Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven

Do you get it?  Jesus is telling you.  Fulfillment does exist.   That’s what that word blessed means.  It means happy.  It means fulfilled.    But this fulfillment doesn’t come the way people expect.   It doesn’t come from having something.   It comes instead from facing up to what you don’t have, from what you will never have even.   Only then does the fulfillment come.  Because only then does your hand become open enough to be given what you can never have.

But lots of things get in the way of this fulfillment happening.  People run after all the wrong things instead.   And keep in mind even right things become wrong things if you ask too much of them.   If you look to your spouse or your kids for your fulfillment, well, that right thing becomes a wrong thing.   You place an expectation on your kids or your spouse or whoever that they can never fulfill.  Still some folks keep running after things like that all their lives. 

But other folks come to a different place.   They start believing.  This fulfillment, it doesn’t even exist.   And once they start doubting the fulfillment, they start doubting all sorts of things.  They start doubting people, sometimes even the people they’re closest to.  They doubt the future, the past, the present.   They start doubting everything.  

But you don’t have to start doubting everything, to have the doubt infect you.  No, it’ll infect you before you even realize it. 

It happened twenty years ago at least, but I still remember the shock of it like yesterday.  I had gone to visit my parents in Georgia.   My dad needed a new tire, and so I had ridden with him to his local tire place.   While he talked to the mechanic, I sat down on the curb outside the office just minding my own business.   That’s when it happened. This complete stranger just came up and started talking to me.   I immediately thought.  “What’s his angle?  What does he want from me?”   Then out of nowhere I realized the shocking truth.   He didn’t want anything.  He was simply being friendly.   Why did I doubt his intentions? Why did I get suspicious immediately?   I had become cynical.   

Over the years, I had had folks come up and be friendly with an agenda, with an angle, with something they wanted from me.  And I had come to believe that was everybody.  If I didn’t know them, I couldn’t trust them.   But if I had thought about it, I had encountered far more trustworthy people than untrustworthy people.   My cynicism made no sense. 

But here’s the problem.  Cynicism lies to you.  So, you get mugged by life in some way, someone betrays you, exploits you, takes advantage of you.  Then a voice rises up and says.  Don’t you see.  You can’t trust people.  You can’t hope for the best.  You’ve gotta watch out for you period.   Then on top of that lie, cynicism tells you a bigger one.   

It tells you that now you have the inside scoop.  It makes you feel that you see things as they really are.   You know.  Other people don’t know, but you know.  And that lie gives you a perverted sense of fulfillment.  It gives you a sort of twisted self-worth that you can unflinchingly look at the world as it really is.  But here’s the stunning truth.     It’s not the way the world is at all. 

And this lie, if you let it grow, it will make you harder. It will numb you to the world’s pain, to even your own pain.   It will lead you to live in a world far darker than the one that actually exists.  And when that happens, something happens inside of you, something that as it grows will destroy you.   I don’t know if anyone described it more chillingly than the writer C.S. Lewis.  Here is what he wrote.   

To love at all is to be vulnerable.  Love anything and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken.  If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even an animal.  Wrap it carefully around with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness (or I would say cynicism).  But in that casket – safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change.  It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.

Now how do these words of Jesus free you from the cynicism?  How do they lead you to fulfillment?  First, they puncture the lie.   They tell you the truth that cynicism doesn’t.  And what’s that truth?  You don’t know.   You don’t know anything really.   You don’t know other people’s agendas, their inner thoughts, their true motivations.  Heck, if you’re honest, you’re all that clear on your own.   And you have no idea what the future holds.  You don’t even have a clear picture of the past or even the present.   You are profoundly poor in spirit, as Jesus puts it.  You lack a lot.  But that doesn’t bum you or depress you.  Why?  Because you realize, everyone else lacks a lot too.  Everyone is poor.  Everyone is struggling.  Everyone lacks.  As a wise Scottish Presbyterian preacher put it, everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.   Everyone, everyone you meet is fighting a great battle, and a lot of days they feel like they’re losing it. 

But that’s not all that preacher said, he said two words before those words on fighting a battle that tell you what puncturing that lie brings.   He said.  “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.”   And when you see that battle, that is what happens.  Kindness happens.  

For some striking reason, almost twenty years after he died, Fred Rogers of Mr. Rogers fame has become huge.  He now has two movies about him, a bunch of books, even a hit podcast called Finding Fred.   And listening to that podcast this week, I heard this story. 

A lot of people don’t realize that Mr. Rogers was a Presbyterian pastor, and like most pastors, Fred Rogers had some pastor friends, especially a pastor named George Wirth.   One day, George and Fred were having lunch.   And George was venting about this leader in his church who was doing whatever it took to get George fired.  And as George shared all the not so nice things this leader was doing, Fred listened.  Then he said something like this.  “I wonder what painful things happened in this man’s life to make him so bitter, to lead him to do such mean things.”   Do you get what Mr. Rogers was doing?  He was asking himself and George too.  Where was this man’s lack?  What was the great battle he was fighting?   

And when you see that, that even the worst of us struggles with that profound poverty, you see them differently.   Instead of getting captured by cynicism, you become free to see them with compassion, kindness even.    And you become free to do that because you know.  You’re poor too.   And you know.  Even as you grow, your poverty will always remain.   And that doesn’t lead you to feel bad.  It just leads you to become open to all that life still has to teach you. 

In that Finding Fred podcast, they took a whole episode to share the story of a young, very sick girl named Beth who Mr. Rogers touched in a particularly profound way.   Now I’m not going to tell you that story.  You can listen to it on the podcast, and let it touch you as it touched me.  But I do want to share one thing that happened in that story.   One day, Beth’s mom was home cooking and the phone rang.  It was Mr. Rogers.   He asked her.  “Do you have a few minutes?  Is this a good time?”  Beth’s mom said yes.   And Mr. Rogers said, “Good, because I noticed what wonderful self esteem Beth and her brother have.  How did you and your husband instill that in them?”   And Beth’s mom shared some thoughts and hung up the phone.   The whole time Beth was listening.   She asked.   “Who was that?’   And her mom replied, “Oh it was Mr. Rogers.”  And Beth stunned, said.  “You were giving Mr. Rogers advice on building self-esteem in kids?”  But as Beth’s mom said on the podcast with humor in her voice. “That was Mr. Rogers, always wanting to learn more, to grow, to be open to all that others had to teach him.”  He never forgot his lack. 

But how does all this poverty of spirit lead you to fulfillment?  It leads you to fulfillment because it makes you open.  It makes you open to receive what you can never get, what Jesus calls the kingdom of heaven.     It makes you open to love, to the love that saves you, the love that heals you, the love that fulfills you.   For ultimately that is what you lack.   You lack the love.  You lack the certainty that you are loved.   You yearn to know you have infinite value and worth.  You yearn to know that you are loved infinitely, without question, that nothing will ever take that love away.   That is the poverty you feel. 

And how does the love come?  Well, think about it.  If anyone has reason to be cynical, it’s God.  After all, God does know.  God knows all your thoughts, all of them, including the worst ones.  God knows every great thing you’ve done, and every awful one.  Yet, God never gets cynical about you, about me.  No, God still believes in us even when we don’t believe in ourselves.  God never gives up hope.  God never stops loving us.   Even as in Jesus, we brutally killed God, God never stopped loving.   And that love changes everything.  It shows you the world as it truly is, a world God loved so much, God gave up everything to heal it, to heal you, to bring you home, to fill you with the love forever. 

And here’s the wonder, once you know the love, you can’t find the end of it. It keeps going and going.  There’s always more.  That’s why poverty of spirit isn’t something you get over or get past.  The more love you have, the more love you realize is there.   There is no end to the abundance. And in that abundance, you realize how much more God still has to give.   And in that abundance, cynicism dies, and joy and hope and love grows, until your life becomes more than you could ever have dreamed or imagined.   For blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs, theirs is the kingdom of heaven.