with my mouth I will make known Your faithfulness to all generations.
For I have said, Mercy shall be built up forever;
Your faithfulness You shall establish in the very heavens.”
Psalm 89:1-2
Last week we explored how Micah's mandate to act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly is to be done in relationship with our God. We took comfort in knowing we are not alone and recognizing He is with us giving us the strength to do His will. This week at CLA-LA, we reflect upon His faithfulness, which enables us to live lives of justice. “I will sing of the mercies of the Lord forever; with my mouth I will make known Your faithfulness to all generations. For I have said, Mercy shall be built up forever; Your faithfulness You shall establish in the very heavens.” Psalm 89:1-2 The work of justice is not easy. The burdens our clients carry are heavy and their circumstances often disheartening. We have prayed with clients who faced innumerable odds and saw victory. We have also counseled and prayed with clients who failed to receive their desired outcome.
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In our last post, we discussed Micah’s "He has shown you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” Micah 6:8
Before we go any further into exploring what justice and kindness look like in our everyday lives, I’d like to pause for a minute. Many of us have tried—some of us many times—to live Micah 6:8 lives. But for whatever reason we were deterred. It got really hard. Life got in the way. We encountered problems that seemed entirely unfixable, and injustices that were entrenched and unyielding. Maybe we burned out and went back to living a life we could understand, a life of just providing and getting by, a life somehow more manageable. But that’s not the good life. That’s not the adventure that Micah 6:8 invites us to. So we must ask, before we go any further, how can we possibly find the strength to do this? What is the sustaining power to continue pursuing justice, when those we try to help are imprisoned by myriad diverse chains that our meager tools cannot pry free? How do we continue in service when we ourselves are deeply broken? Have we been sent on a Quixotic quest, doomed to futility? There is one verse that seems to inevitably come up when we discuss living a just lifestyle as a follower of Christ. For those of you who have been around CLA-LA for a while, you know this verse as one of the cornerstones of our mission. Perhaps it has become a bit trite. But for all its familiarity, it is profound in its simplicity: "He has shown you, O man, what is good; Pages on pages, days and years and millennia have been spent trying to define and describe what it means to live a good life. Micah does it in one sentence. But the brevity of his mandate can sometimes obscure its wide-reaching impact. |
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April 2018
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