Around the Year With Emmet Fox - 26 March 2011
THE BLESSED MEEK
Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth (Matthew 5:5).
On the surface, this Beatitude seems to be contradicted by the facts fo everyday life. But either Jesus knew what he was talking about, and is to be taken seriously, or his teaching should be dropped altogether. If he is to be relied upon, then let us pay him the compliment of assuming that he knew best about the art of living.
The fact is that when correctly understood, the teaching of Jesus is found to be the most practicable of all doctrines; and the whole essence of his teaching and of its application is summed up in this text. When you possess the spiritual meaning of this text you have the secret of dominion - the secret of overcoming every kind of difficulty.
We notice that there are two polar words in the text - meek and earth. First of all, the word earth in the Bible really means the whole of your outer experience, and to "inherit the earth" means to have dominion over that outer experience. So we see that when the bible talks about possessing the earth, governing the earth, making the earth glorious, it is referring to the conditions of our lives, from our bodily health outward to the farthest point in our affairs. So this text undertakes to tell us how we may possess, or govern, or be masters of our environment.