The Beatitudes in Action

I love the Beatitudes as Eugene Peterson presents them in the Message. They are just real, and especially to middle school and high school students. I'm starting a series this week taking commercials and placing them against a Beatitude to offset the message the world wants us to get and the one Jesus does.

For instance, a food commercial, I'll use the Snickers ones with Betty White, Aretha Franklin, and Liza MInelli. The idea will be that marketers tell us that our emptiness needs to be filled with their product, like a candy bar in this case. But Jesus says in Matthew 5:6, "You're blessed when you've worked up a good appetite for God. He's food and drink in the best meal you'll ever eat."

I'm excited to start this up, as I think the implications for the application of the Beatitudes to a teenagers' life are huge. The themes will be consumerism, contentedness, and change. I'm even going to use the classic Wendy's "Hole" commercial that Mark Oestreicher uses in Youth Ministry 3.0 to illustrate the concept of turning around and doing things differently. And you can't go wrong with the commmercial posted above, it's scary funny.