Good Things Can Come Out of Bad Situations

In our conversation on Friday morning we talked about some of Jesus' sayings that are commonly known as the beatitudes.  He says things like "blessed are the poor" and "blessed are those that mourn."  We agreed that these are difficult sayings, not so much because we don't understand them, but because they sort of rub us the wrong way.  We imagined it might be like the feeling a cat would have if we petted its fur from the tail end toward the head rather than stroking it the other way.

We found it interesting that Jesus said that things we view as bad actually contain a blessing.  The question came up about what could possibly be good about being poor.  Linda suggested that when you are poor you appreciate things more and that you learn that money can't buy the things that are really important in life.  And George shared how he learned how to paint with pastels when he was in prison (he was taught the technique by a man on death row).  So we had to acknowledge that good things can come out of bad situations.

Someone said that maybe "the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, because there is more crap over there."  We thought this was funny.  We talked about how sometimes things can get so bad that we might be tempted to give up.  Linda told us that she had reached that point last February and had tried to commit suicide.  She took 45 pills and then went and lay down in a cemetary to die where no one would bother her.  She lay there for hours experiencing frightening hallucinations.  But she also remembered praying to God that she had made a mistake and that she wanted to live.  Amazingly she woke up hours later and then admitted herself into a 30 day treatment program.

We also discussed a bit about the saying, "blessed are the peacemakers."  We talked about how the government spends so much money on weapons (56% of the national budget on defense) and so little on peace.  Someone said that peacemaking is harder than troublemaking.  Linda told us that someone had ripped the top of her tent in the night and that she woke up half wet the next morning.  At this George told us about a man he knew in prison named "Mule-Head" Hunt.  This man was on death row for the murder of over 30 people.  We realized what a difficult and yet extraordinary thing it is to make peace in a world filled with so much violent and destructive behavior.

In closing we decided it was encouraging to know that we could find blessings even in midst of all the crap in our world and in our lives!