A young mother wrote about the importance of correct interpretation. "It was late in the afternoon in the crowded mall. My three-year-old daughter and I had visited almost every store. I could tell the little toddler was getting tired by her comments like "When are we going to go home?"

To counter her growing discontent so I could finish my shopping, I asked her if she would like to visit the toy store. "Yeaaahhh, she squealed as she took off as fast as her little feet could carry her in the direction of the toy store. To catch up with her, I broke into a trot. Just as I got within a few feet of her, I teased "I'm going to beat you to the store!' Looking back, she saw me gaining on her and yelled at the top of her lungs, 'No, don't beat me Mamma, don't beat me!'

"I looked around and realized that everyone in the mall was watching. Embarrassed, I yelled back to my daughter, 'Don't worry honey, I'll let you win our little race. I won't beat you.' Somehow from the looks on the people's faces, I don't think they believed me."

Words aren't neutral. They communicate ideas we might or might not want to communicate. They trigger emotions. They draw a response.

This is true not only in our words spoken to each other but in our reading of the Word of God. When we read certain words of the Bible, they trigger certain thoughts and pictures in our mind that draw on our background and personal experience.

In the portion of the Sermon on the Mount called the Beatitudes, Jesus talks about the right road for that is what the word that is translated blessed literally means. The Hebrew word is asher which means "on the right road" or headed in the right direction." In the Beatitudes, Jesus identifies people who are on the right road those who recognize their spiritual poverty, the peacemakers, the persecuted, the pure in heart are all said to be on the right road.

Also, on the right road are the "gentle" sometimes translated as the "meek."

Most of us think of the word "meek" as describing a character like Charles Schultzes', Charlie Brown. In one cartoon, Charlie Brown is engrossed in a woodworking project when Lucy comes in and asks: "How's the birdhouse coming along, Charlie Brown?" He replies, "well, I'm a lousy carpenter. I can't nail straight. I can't saw straight and I always split the wood. I'm nervous, I lack confidence, I'm stupid, I have poor taste, and absolutely no sense of design...” Then he concludes in the last frame, "so, all things considered, it's coming along okay."

That's how we think of meek -- as timid -- as frightened -- as someone who won't assert himself because he can't assert himself. Meek rhymes with weak. If a person is meek, it is because he has no choice.

We bring this understanding of the word "meek" to the Beatitude. We hear:

“Blessed are the meek“ and we translate it as: Blessed are the passive or blessed are the timid. Blessed are the deficient in spirit and courage. Blessed are the submissive.

But is that the message that this Beatitude means to send? Is that the picture that Matthew's gospel means to draw of the ideal disciple of Jesus?

Let's take a closer look. In the original Greek, the word here that is translated "meek" is the word praus. The word praus paints quite a different portrait than the one that meek paints for most of us. Praus means strength under control. It means steadiness of spirit. It is passion under discipline, strength expressed in gentleness.

The word meek in both the Hebrew and the Greek languages comes from the root "To be tamed" or in the case of a field "To be plowed." When a farmer goes to prepare a field he knows that the soil is too hard to receive the seeds so he'll plow the field to loosen the soil, to soften it, to make it receptive. Then it is literally true that the meek, or the plowed field, will inherit the earth more than one that is hardened and tough. With a horse they would use the same word to tame a horse. The tamed horse still has plenty of energy, plenty of power, but power and energy is now directed by something other than the horse, so its energy is directed or steered.

A person who is meek is a person who has gone through some kind of experience in life in which his self control has been softened and his illusion about dominating his world or himself has been broken. It's remarkable; you read in the Old Testament and you find that Moses is described as being very meek more than all men who were on the face of the earth. And Moses was the man who went into Pharaoh, the most powerful person in the world, confronted Pharaoh and said to him, "Let my people go!" And went back repeatedly, until finally Pharaoh had to yield.

The Beatitude does not mean blessed are the weak. It does not mean blessed are those who remain passive in the face of injustice. "God has not given us a spirit of timidity," wrote Paul to the young Timothy, "but a spirit of power and of love and of self control." Moses was neither cowardly nor soft. He just knew how to take his ego out of the way. Jesus, in Matthew 11:29, refers to Himself as being "meek and lowly of heart." but the one thing Jesus was not was weak or cowardly or indecisive. Meekness is not weakness. Rather, it is the disciplined, the controlled spirit. Those who are meek are those who recognize their debt to God and are therefore gentle in their dealings with others. As Paul describes how we shall live in Titus 3:2, we shall "speak evil of no one, we should not be touchy. We are to be gentle and show perfect courtesy toward all people." An old commentary in my library written by a man named Matthew Henry says the meek are those who can bear provocation without being inflamed by it, who can show their displeasure without being transported into any indecencies, who can be cool when others are not."

Benito Mussolini, when asked what his ambition was, replied: "I am obsessed by this wild desire -- it consumes my whole being. I want to make a mark on my era with my will, like a lion with its claw! A mark like this " and using his fingernail as a claw, Mussolini gouged a scratch in the back of a chair.

That is not meekness but it is not strength either. Compare Abraham Lincoln who was both stronger and meeker than Mussolini. As a young lawyer, Lincoln had been personally crushed by the rude treatment of a distinguished colleague, Edwin Stanton. But ignoring hurt and ignoring pride, Lincoln appointed to the cabinet this man who had snubbed him. And Stanton learned to respect and even love the president whom he had once publicly characterized as the Illinois ape. In a similar way, when General McClellan's repeated insolence to the president made others, including Stanton, furious, Lincoln refused to strike back in anger. "I will hold General McClellan's horse," he said, "if he will only bring us success.” No weak personality could possibly be so meek. It couldn’t take the risk.

One of my favorite hymns is the great, "The Church's One Foundation." But I am bothered by one line in the last stanza. You remember how it goes, we just sang it.

AO happy ones and holy, Lord give us grace that we, like them, the meek and lowly, on high may dwell with Thee."

Do you see what we are praying in that last line? We want grace to dwell on high along with the meek and the lowly -- they make quiet neighbors -- but we don't want to be the meek and the lowly. But the meek and the lowly are exactly who Jesus calls us to be not out of our weakness but out of his strength.

It is the meek who are on the right road because it is the meek who reflect the style of God.

God deals with his world in restrained power. He did not change human history by putting on an extravaganza. He changed it through a baby born in a manger. God does not win men and women to himself through lining them against a wall and saying, "believe or else." Instead he hands the job to a mustard seed church with the promise that it will grow to something great. God's quiet approach does not grow out of a lack of power. It grows instead out of a meekness a self restraint that allows him to woo a world rather than ravage it. When God calls us to be gentle, tender hearted and slow to anger, He calls us to relate to the world the way He relates to the world.

The promise is that the meek will inherit the earth. Jesus is not giving advice on how to pick up real estate. He is speaking instead of the promise of the psalmist in Psalm 37, "yet a little more and the wicked will be no more; though you will look well at his place, he will not be there. But the meek will possess the land, and delight themselves in abundant prosperity."

Of course there’s a good question: "Who else but the meek will want the world after the arrogant and pushy get through with it?" But the earth of which Jesus is speaking is not the present earth of corruption and decay. It is, instead, the new earth.

As Paul writes in Romans 8, the new creation and the children of God are made for each other. And it is the gentle who are children of God. When we are meek - when we are gentle - we are on the right road to our inheritance.