Originally Posted by Iowa10Speed

Written for a church group, but suitable regardless of your beliefs ...

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
Matthew 5:3 (NRSV)

I straddle my bike, panting easily, sweating, waiting for the light on Urbandale Avenue. I’m really dripping in the wicked August sun.

Ahead lies a good hill, a remnant of a trestle that got the old trolleys over Merle Hay Road to the turnaround. My red backpack, bulging with business suit, laptop and folders, digs into my back. Light still red.

The car beside me rolls a window. Frosty air within collides with the wet heat of my world. A fog bank forms, blurring a young man’s face. He hollers the most clever cruelty he can think of:

“Get a car!”

The light changes before my brain decodes his rant. I smile. “I have two new ones in my garage,” I would have said.

He wouldn’t get it.

I chose my apparent misery. I love summer heat indexes. Biking back and forth to work satisfies both curiosity and challenge. I save gas. But those are boring cover stories.

What I did not expect were sun rays behind clouds, pulling me downtown each morning. Neighborhood streets ease me home each night. Daybreaks set rhythm, evenings add texture. Soccer balls and pony tails bounce haphazardly in front of me. Self-important dogs yip behind me. Fresh cut grass. The first tint of fall. Gliding through raindrops. Four wheels can never match the poverty of two.

On every street, the call for more is loud: seek more comfort, more tech, more speed, more status.

Bicycles create the opposite: vulnerability, openness and humility. We can choose similar characteristics for our spirits.

The poor spirit turns aside jeers, notices each detail of joy, savors each blessing of peace. Invite your spirit to inhabit poverty.