Matthew 5:8

God blesses those whose hearts are pure, for they will see God.

One of the greatest privileges of my life in recent years has been to spend a good deal of time with people who are blind or partially sighted. I am constantly blessed by them and am conscious that they are often far more aware of what is going on than those of us with sight. We get distracted by the visual clues and don’t listen nearly as hard as they do. This Beatitude naturally causes me to think of my blind friends and forces me to ask what Jesus meant when he talked about seeing God. In his Gospel, John makes it clear that no one has seen God. So what did Jesus mean?

I believe that Jesus is saying that the person whose heart is purely focused on him has uninterrupted closeness to God. There is nothing in the way. It is describing life at its best, when we have a complete awareness of God.

Having a pure heart is an important theme in the psalms. In Psalm 24, David asks the question: “Who may climb the mountain of the Lord? Who may stand in his holy place? Only those whose hands and hearts are pure, who do not worship idols and never tell lies” (Psalm 24:3-4). In this life it is impossible for us to be completely pure and without sin, but the closer we get to the Lord the purer our minds will be. The more we deliberately open our lives to the breath of God’s Spirit, the more he will be able to help us to avoid and reject all impurity.

There have been some remarkable and terrifying stories of fatbergs in recent years. A fatberg is a very large mass of solid waste in a sewerage system, consisting especially of congealed fat and personal hygiene products. In 2019 a town in Devon developed a fatberg that was 210 feet long! It is easy both to imagine the disruption that the fatberg caused and the relief to the town when it was destroyed. A fatberg is made up of tiny elements all of which might look quite innocent by themselves, but together they are destructive. Our task day by day is to spot the impurities and sins that so easily and subtly creep into our lives, to ensure that they don’t grow into something that blocks our relationship with God. We can be sure that the clearer we keep our lives, the closer we will live to God and all his blessings.

Question

What can you do today to keep yourself pure?

Prayer

Lord God, give me your strength today to stand up to anything that might spoil my relationship with you. Amen