Emphasis Preaching Journal

In the parsonage of a minister friend is a plant terrarium which never ceases to fascinate me. There, in the midst of family life, a television set, magazines, furniture, wall hangings, and what-nots, the little world inside the glass jug quietly pursues its own agenda. Of course, the processes occurring within the jug are logically explained in terms of chemical reactions, but it remains a novelty that, undisturbed by the goings-on around it, the terrarium creates its own atmosphere. It is not an isolated article set aside from the mainstream of parsonage life, but rather serves to enhance the surroundings in which it has been placed. In a curious sort of way, it is in the world but not of the world.

Dr. William Mallard, professor of church history at Candler School of Theology, refers to the Kingdom of God, as characterized by the teachings of Jesus, in terms of the Kingdom of the Upside Down. The Kingdom, he observes, inverts worldly standards and priorities. A careful analysis of the Beatitudes supports the claim. A review of the life of the saints of the church carries the claim beyond theory.

Great Christians accomplished great things because they carried their own atmospheres with them -- atmospheres created not by chemical reaction, but such spiritual reaction as manifested in the personification of the Beatitudes.