“There is probably no more beautiful quality in a Christian than meekness. It enhances manliness; it adorns femininity. It is a jewel polished by grace. But it is all to rare. Is that because so few of us know what it is to be poor in spirit and to mourn for our sins?

Poverty of spirit, mourning for sin, spiritual meekness—all these hallmarks of kingdom life can be imitated. We can counterfeit them. But just as a stone hurled into the air seems to defy the law of gravity, only to rise ever more slowly until it turns and plummets to the ground with increasing velocity, so it is with all cheap imitations of God’s grace. They “burn out” as they return to the atmosphere of this world. They cannot sustain themselves in a fallen world. Only the real thing will survive.”  ~Sinclair Ferguson, The Sermon on the Mount: Kingdom Life in a Fallen World