Good morning,
and welcome.
My friend,
wife, mom, and author Kendra Broekhuis sends out a monthly email to those who have
signed up for it. It’s called Present
Tense…embracing the tensions of faith in everyday life. In the latest version of the monthly email,
she speaks of Micah chapter 6, and especially verse 8…the verse where Micah
says the words of God: He has shown
you, O mortal, what is good. And what
does the Lord require of you? To act
justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.
She speaks of
the meaning of justice and mercy and the tension and relationship that is apparent
between the two. One of her comments was
that where there is a lack of justice, there will be corresponding needs for
even greater mercy.
She has a
point. Think of some of the injustices
that you know about in the world you inhabit.
Do you know of people who don’t have enough to eat? Who want housing, but don’t have it? Who are dealing with medical issues but don’t
have the insurance coverage or the means to pay? I’m sure you can think of other such issues
that people face in their daily lives.
To act justly is to recognize and act upon these situations as we can
and are able.
To love mercy
is to go beyond just the simple act of putting a band aid on someone’s hunger
or housing situation. To love mercy is
to recognize all the times we’ve been on the receiving end of God’s mercy and
compassion, and get into the weeds, so to speak, with those in need. To do more than just toss a sack of food
their way or give a few dollars. To love
mercy is to insert oneself into the messes of others…bearing burdens, wiping
tears, and demonstrating the love and mercy of God.
But when we do
this…when we get “down and dirty” with others in their need, we often feel like
there is so much need and so little we can do that it seems hopeless to even
try. Kendra addresses that with an
analogy where she speaks of a puzzle.
Here’s what she had to say:
I like the
analogy of a puzzle, kind of like the 1,500 piece our family did last week:
God knows and
understands the bigger picture of everything happening today, even when to us
it looks like a million pieces in a random pile, and those pieces are flipped
upside down, and oh yeah, we lost the box with the picture on it.
One day, He
will restore perfect justice and mercy into every piece of this puzzle that is
our world. In the meantime, He invites
me to pick even just one piece of that puzzle and find ways to act justly and
love mercy within that sphere of influence. And, He encourages me with the last part of
the verse He so kindly added, which is to walk humbly…fueled by the
ultimate expression of both justice and mercy, which was Jesus taking up His
cross for us.
I have wrestled
with the fact that anything I might be able to do in the way of justice and
mercy is but a small drop in a very huge bucket. I often wonder if I’m making any headway at
all, or if the world is indeed any better because I am living in it. These words from Kendra are helpful, and help
me keep my bearings on what I and countless others do every day.
And, as my
friend Jennifer White has said, “I can’t do everything, but I can do something.” That too is a good way to think of these
things. No, we can’t do everything. But we can all do something. I have many times been sustained by this thought.
I’ve also found
helpful the fact that Jesus Himself didn’t heal the world or feed every human
being. He did good deeds as he went
along in life and met people on the way.
The blind man. The man who couldn’t
walk. Others who he met or who came to
him. One. Person.
At. A. Time.
And that’s what
we do as well. And when we do, we
fulfill what God requires…to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with
the Lord.
Blessings.
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