Blessed are the poor in spirit

Matthew 5:3

"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven"

As Jesus addresses the crowd during the Sermon on the Mount, he often inverts worldly expectations, it is the humble that are exalted, the meek inherit the earth, those that hunger for righteousness will be filled, and that those who are poor in spirit are blessed. 

In a world governed by finances, self-sufficiency and hyper-independence, it’s often seen that the poor would be at the lower end of the chain, to be poor in wealth makes it hard to acquire our daily needs of food and shelter, to be poorly skilled refers to somebody who is a novice, inexperienced or bad at a trade, but Jesus teaches us somebody who is poor in spirit, is one that recognises their spiritual poverty before God, somebody that understands they are not able to achieve spiritual ascension through the knowledge attained by man, but instead put their faith in the Holy Spirit. 

Luke 1:52 

"He has brought down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted those of humble estate"

A person who is spiritually poor is one who has alleviated himself of the arrogant assumptions of the personal compass that so drives the rational atheist or the over zealous narcissist into believing that man's knowledge on the spirit, grown in our short lives of ignorant dwellings, could begin to grasp the totality of the oneness of the spirit of the universe. 

To learn of the spirit, we must go to the spirit. 

Jesus teaches us that it is not through the efforts of our own workings, that are frequently based on fragmented perceptions and the limited situational circumstances of our   interpersonal relationships, but instead the reliance on our faith in God that leads to spiritual ascension. 

To be poor in spirit is to recognise our spiritual void before God. As we come to God, we are ready to be spiritually filled, this is a humbling experience as we strip away the shackles of self importance, release ourselves from the ego, and ask for the higher knowledge to lead us. 

Proverbs 16:19 

"Better to be lowly in spirit with the oppressed, than to share the plunder with the proud."