Skip to content

For They Shall See God

Blessed are the pure in heart (for they shall see God).

And I always thought that to be pure in heart meant to have successfully wrangled my sinful impulses — stuffed my fleshly desires into cages like so many squawking, unruly chickens. To be pure in heart meant to follow all the rules.

Sadly, to be pure in heart meant to cut off my desires at the root, for they could not be trusted.

Blessed are the pure in heart? To be honest, being blessed sounded boring.

But…

What if pure in heart was something different altogether, not a stainless-steel sterilization at all, but a picture of wholeness, of love?

What if pure in heart is a soul so filled with light that it can shine freely freely freely without those ugly impulses to grasp and demand, to coerce and manipulate?

What if being being pure in heart isn’t about being void of traditional immoralities (lying, swearing, sex), but rather unadulterated by the darker demons that twist and corrupt love into something unrecognizable (fear, doubt, and all the little ways their horde robs the soul of its life)?

Blessed, then, are the pure in heart – those who have had their souls broken wide open, wrung out, scraped clean. For they shall see God.

They shall see God — in themselves, in their children, in the faces of their brothers and sisters, in the faces of strangers.

Blessed, blessed, blessed.

(We shall see God.)

published January 19, 2015

subscribe to updates:

(it's pretty much the only way to stay in touch with me these days)

leaf