“Blessed are the poor…”

This the passage that was going through my head as I walked through the streets of a village in Guatemala last week.

It was a poor village. Just up the hill from an orphanage. The orphanage provides food for many of the children in the village.

“Blessed are the poor…”

It’s Luke’s version of the Beatitudes. There’s no wiggle room in this version. No middle-class room for debate or a way to comfort ourselves out of the discomfort of poverty with this. Nope, Luke just makes it plain and simple — “Blessed are the poor.”