It's strange how the words of Scripture can travel. And these blessings in particular have made an incredible voyage. Jesus spoke the words, while sitting on a mountain. He left the crowd of people and gathered with his closest friends, and these pronouncements poured out of him. Many people have looked at this sermon, and they've seen it as a complete restructuring of how we ought to think as Christians. It's amazing how these bits of wisdom, echoed from that rocky crag to be passed down from generation to generation. These words--they were rolled into brittle parchment scrolls and archived in caves. The letters have been etched into animal hide so that they mingle with the pungent smell of leather as men and women read them. The syllables have been bound in heavy books, stored in monasteries, placed gingerly into a holder. They have been passed out in small tracts, left fluttering on street corners, and trampled by pedestrians. The words--they come in red and green fonts or on onion paper. They have been covered in colored plastic. Sometimes, you can still find them in the drawers of hotel rooms. And now they have come up on my computer screen, and I scroll through them in an entirely different manner.

These holy messages have been translated and passed down, as the lips of small children chant them, over and over, in the hopes of getting a gold star in Sunday school. They are handed over from one language to the next as scholars debate the interpretation of each syllable. Those echoes of what Jesus said have been whispered and shouted, copied and hidden. And they have moved to us… to here and now.

- Carol Howard Meritt,"Blessed Are Those Who Mourn," sermon on Day1.org, January 30, 2011