The Farmville herald. (Farmville, Va.) 1957-current, 1960-04-08
Love Thysef Last
Lesson for April 10, 1860

Jesus shocked his listeners
then, and shocks his readers to-
day, by many statements which
are plain enough, so far as the
language goes; but unbelieve-
able. That is, we can under
stand every word in the state
ment, or we think we can. What
we find hard to take is the SEN
tence as a whole Take those
three sentences with which the
Sermon on the Mount begins:
Blessed are the poor in spirit
Blessed are the meek :.
Blessed are they that mourn
:" Blessed" means happy
or rather the Greek word trans
lated blessed" means happy
All the other words are COM
monty used, we have no trouble
understanding what Jesus said.
But could he have meant it?
The thing sounds upside-down,
backward, quite the opposite of
real life.
What Jesus Is Driving At
Well, it is the opposite of the
way most people do live. There
is an old saying, Look out for
Number One" Who is Number
One? Why, l am Number One.
We have other proverbs much
like that. MISREPRESENTATION is
the first law Of life" Every
man for himself and the devil
ia Ike the hindmost." Jesus
means to say that these prov
erbs are clear out of line with
Gods will and his kingdom.
Either they are right or Bless
ed are the meek is right; you
can't have it both ways.
That word meek" needs
some explanation, to be sure.
The word in the Greek language
in which the New Testament
was first written, does not mean
just the same as our word
meek has come to suggest to-
day. The word Jesus used did
not mean humble-come- tumble.
lacking self-respect and self
reliance, it did not mean a
dishrag sort of character. What
he meant by the word can be
expressed by the words mot in
sisting on ones rights" IN o
demanding first place op-
posite of proud, conceited, de-
handing, aggressive. The old
fashioned word gentle" as US
ed in the words gentleman"
or "gentlefolk" comes closer to
it than meek" You might
translate Jesus sentence this
way: Happy is the man who is
not always insisting on his
rights! Happy is the man who
loves himself last!
Another word is humble p"
and many scholars think that
all these first three "beati-
tudes" are driving at the same
point: Happy are the humble
those who really love them
selves last. This is one of the
many teachings of Jesus that
are practical two ways, for this
life and for the next, for every
day situations and for eternity
too. Jesus himself has suggest
ed how this works. He was
once a guest at dinner, and he
called the attention of those sit
ting next to him to the polite"
put persistent scrambling for the
pest places. In an oriental din
ing room as in our own. some
places at the table are more
honorable" than others. Jesus
gave the down-to-earth advice
In effect: If you must scramb g
scramble for the lowest places.
not the top ones. It is much
better to be invited to take a
better place than to be asked
to get out of one! The man who
is always insisting on his rights.
standing on his dignity. is gen
orally unhappy and envious. for
he cannot take any pleasure in
the success of others. It is the
unSelfish who really get the fun
out of life.
PayOff In Eternity
Jesus parable Of the rich
man and Lazarus has a good
deal to do with all this. The
rich man in that story, while he
was living, seems to have seen
nobody much but himself,
thought of nobody's welfare
but his own. If he ever saw the
beggar. he made no move to
help him. His brothers needed
wise counSe but he never
thought about them either. He
aimed to get his share Of the
big melon Of the world
and he got it. He discovered his
mistake too late. So We have
another light on what Jesus
meant. The man who is the op-
poSite Of meek - the selfish.
greedy man = is a man who
hardly even sees any one but
himself. He cannot put himself
in the other mans place. He
learns at last what Dickens
character Mr.. = Marley learned,
too late: Humanity was nv