Be Still And Know

Matthew 5:3 “God blesses those who are poor and realise their need for him, for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs.” Robert Powell acted the part of Jesus in Franco Zeffirelli’s film Jesus of Nazareth. He claims that his life was changed by the experience and recalls the day when he was filming the Sermon on the Mount. Powell had no time for Christianity but, as he preached the sermon as an actor, he said that he was so affected by its beauty that he began to cry. The tears were not in the script, but Zeffirelli wisely kept them in the movie. It is easy to see why he was so affected by these words because they take us to the heart of what it means to be alive. They stand before us as a challenge and encouragement as we seek to understand what it means to live the Christian life. Today’s verse is the first of the so-called Beatitudes. Before we start looking at them we need to be clear what Jesus meant by the ‘kingdom of heaven’, which was an expression he often used. The kingdom of heaven comes wher