Among the #Blessed
“Consider your calling: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.”
Vincent Van Gogh depicts a group of Miners' Wives Carrying Sacks of Coal (1882). We see nothing about them except their invisibility. Their faces are hidden from us, and their dress and posture communicates nothing except how laden they are, and how utterly and entirely they have disappeared into their labor and their social status. Yet it is precisely in their invisibility and their anonymity that they are present to us. Their bent and shadowed form stands out against the placid snow-covered landscape: they fill the scope of our vision, and command our attention.
The meek-spirited shall possess the land and shall be refreshed with an abundance of peace.
— Psalm 37:11
Fourth Sunday of Epiphany
Texts for this Week
Prayer
O God, you know that we are set in the midst of many grave dangers, and because of the frailty of our nature we cannot always stand upright: Grant that your strength and protection may support us in all dangers and carry us through every temptation; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Arvo Part’s Beatitudes
The Choir of King’s College Cambridge sing the interpretation of the Beatitudes arranged by the contemporary minimalist composer of much evocative choral music, Arvo Part. As an Estonian musician, Part’s sensibilities stand at the juncture of the minimalist attention to purity and simplicity, Russian Orthodox sonority, and a Reformational confidence in the power of the plain words of Scripture simply and beautifully performed.
