What in the world is "meek?" Part 1

"Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth." Matthew 5:5

What in the world does Meek mean? The word meek is not a word I use in my daily life. We always read the beatitudes during our Midday Prayer, and when we read meek, I almost always want to pause and research what it means. Most of the other words I use or have seen before in the beatitudes, but meek is one that makes me stop and have to think.

In an effort to try and understand Jesus and what he is communicating, I started doing some research on the word meek. I found it fascinating and thought I would share what I have found so far. We will have a three-part blog relating to the word meek. So welcome to part one of the blog series on the word meek.

So what does the word meek mean? First, I find it important to share a secret. The secret to the beatitudes is that they reflect Jesus. Each line of the beatitudes, we can look to Jesus to find its fullest expression. So Jesus is meek.

The word meek is defined as a person who is humble and trusts in God's justice. I think the word humble is something that really trips me up. For me, I think humble translates in its opposite. To be humble means to not be prideful. However, that really doesn't hit home for me either. Funny enough, the same word we translate as meek is also translated humble and gentle. Thanks to Melissa Dyrda, a past student of Judson Fellowship we have a definition of gentle. Melissa wrote a blog here for our website that broke down gentle. Melissa defined gentle as someone with humility and gratitude towards God. Gentleness displays strength using proper restraint. It allows us to be even-tempered in the face of adversity. Melissa's best quote that captures the gentle/humble/meek is a "calm in the storm."

I believe this helps me understand what meek is because it does not mean to be weak. To be meek is having a presence that can be seen and felt around you. Being meek is not negative. I feel like there are a lot of negative connotations with gentle, but there is strength in meek. Meek or gentle is not a negative term.

In a time where there seems to be a storm of all around us, we could use some people who are meek. We could use people in our communities and in leadership that are meek.