The ancient Greeks used to call the island of Cyprus: ‘the Blessed Isle.’ They considered everything about it to be ideal, its climate, fertility, its beauty, the taste of its wine and so on. They believed Cyprus had everything in it to make life complete and one didn’t need to go anywhere else.
Now, that word blessed is the word Jesus used to describe truly spiritual people. In a world where our greatest longing is for happiness, all we do and achieve never gives it to us; it’s always over the next hill. But what Jesus is saying is that we keep looking in all the wrong places. It’s not out there; it’s in here – within our very selves. Happiness, in its truest sense, is a by-product of healthy spirituality. And when we have that we have a blessedness that will always be there.