February 27

Matthew 5:1-11 

“ 'Real doesn’t happen all at once,’ said the Skin Horse.  ‘You become.  It takes a long time.  That’s why it doesn’t often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept.’”  These words of Margery Williams, from classic children’s book, The Velveteen Rabbit, reveal the reality of our spiritual transformation – it doesn’t happen all at once, it takes a long time and in the words of a 93-year old, life-long Christian, “It ain’t for sissies!”   

The life of the beatitudes – poverty, mourning, meekness, hunger, thirst, purity, peacemaking, persecution – so frequently thought of as some joyous high ideal of the Christian life, is actually quite messy.  It means our hands and feet get dirty.  It means we touch the open wounds of others, tears wet our clothing, and tissues pile up in the corner.  It means we stand in the hard places of pain and violence and proclaim another way.  It means we receive the pain of those around us in order to offer it at the altar of God for transformation. 

Such a life rubs off our sharp corners, softens our edges and transforms hearts of stone to hearts of flesh.  Such a life, in the words of the Skin Horse, makes us Real.  Real people of faith who know when all the fur has been rubbed off, the ears droop and the arms and legs swing loose in the joints, we are not old and ugly; we are loved.