If you’ve ever read an author’s memoir, you come away knowing that writers are insecure … especially when they’re writing. Oh sure, they seem self-confident, like they have the world by the tail. But when they’re alone and they’re sure no one’s watching, they tell themselves that whatever it is they’re working on is garbage … and how did they ever think they had anything important to say? Who are they kidding, anyway? They’ve seen Marmaduke cartoons with greater emotional range and intellectual depth.

As a corollary to all the self-loathing, writers are convinced that other writers don’t suffer from all this doubt. In fact, all the stuff other writers write is probably brilliant, unlike all the stupid drivel you’ve been dumping on the world day after day. Most writers regularly convince themselves that they ought to quit—that the whole thing is just too difficult, and that they’re not any good at it anyway.

It’s a crisis of confidence: “What if I’m just a big phony?”

All right, so maybe you’re not a writer, but have you ever done that to yourself about something you care about? You want to learn Mandarin Chinese, or how to paint with watercolors, or rebuild a transmission, or go noodling with native Arkansans. When you’re in the middle of doing it, there are regular occasions, especially when you’re first beginning, where you think to yourself, “I’m the worst. A smart person wouldn’t have any trouble with this. I swear, I should just give up.”

In academia, we call this “imposter syndrome”: The fear that very soon people will find out that you’re just faking your way through scholarship—that everyone else is competent … but you, unfortunately, are not.

Imposter syndrome. You’re just one step away from being discovered as a fraud.

Have you ever felt that way? I do. On the regular.

And frankly, all my insecurities come bubbling up on All Saints. I’m not that great at a lot of things preachers, let alone Christians, are supposed to be good at. All Saints is a parade of names who made beauty from thin air, who seemed to hear melodies I can't hear. I look down at my own hands and think, I don't belong in that company. Not with this life. Not with this heart that still trembles at the hard parts.

Have you ever felt that way—that everybody else has it figured out, while you’re sitting alone in the dark, just hoping your whole world doesn’t come crashing down because of your incompetence?

But then Luke hands us Jesus' list of the blessed, and things start looking different:

"Blessed are you who are poor. Blessed are you who hunger now. Blessed are you who weep. Blessed are you when people hate you."

If blessed means approved, then I'm in trouble. If blessed means already finished, already victorious, I should probably sit this one out. But that's not how Jesus uses the word.

In our world, blessed sounds like a trophy. But in Jesus' mouth, blessed sounds like a welcome. When Jesus says blessed, he's naming who belongs.

That line has rescued me more times than I can count. Because I was trained to believe blessing is praise after the recital, a ribbon pinned to those who stuck the landing.

Instead, Jesus stands up at the start and names the ones most likely to be hiding in the back row. The impoverished. The hungry. The grieving. The rejected. When Jesus says blessed, he's naming who belongs.

We should pause there, because some of us have carried our hunger like a private failure. Some of us have carried our grief like a rule we keep breaking. Some of us sit in pews and pretend to play at being faithful, certain that the saints would hear our wrong notes.

But Jesus isn't having it. He doesn't romanticize the ache. He doesn't tell the hungry to be content with their empty cupboards. He says God's reign is already moving toward you.

The table's being set with your name card on it. The tears that you think disqualify you are the very springs that tell the truth about your capacity to love. The contempt that people use to keep you out is the occasion for the angels to pull you up a chair. When Jesus says blessed, he's being very clear about who belongs.

Interestingly, Luke pairs the blessings with woes ... and that matters:

"Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now. Woe to you who laugh now. Woe when all speak well of you."