Taking it in

he has told you, O mortal, 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

All you have to do is read the headlines this week to hear a story which goes against everything in this verse.  This erase requires more from us than just simply showing up on Sunday, or accepting Jesus as our Savior, or just worshipping God in nature. It requires us to do something with our faith. It requires us to put our faith in action.

This week there was a news story that had me scratching my head. Somewhere in the US there were kids who were served hot lunches at school. Thirty-two of these owed money to the school for these lunches, they hadn't paid their bill. So someone there ordered people to take the lunches away from the kids and give them only an apple and milk. I think each of us might ask our own questions about this story. Mine was this have we come so far that we don't see people anymore.

This is unfortunately not the only story I have heard this year which has made me ask this question, this one just doesn't happen to be so politically rooted that I think we can actually hear the question instead of get caught up in political divisiveness. We have come to a time that is really of concern to me.  If we loose sight so easily of people's basic needs, where people would actually take food away from children, have we become so focused on money we have lost sight of real people's needs. To me this is a most dangerous time and it is one in which the church should be united in and fight against in every corner.

We need to stop grounding ethics into political realms so we avoid seeing real people who are affected by real decisions. We need to stop looking at the bottom line and start seeing the people who the bottom line affects.  We need to shout out that we are people of the Christ willing not to usher others into the realm of unseeability but into being fully seen. Only in this way will we honor Micah's verses and even emulate what is being said today in the Beatitudes in Matthew. Because walking humbly with our God requires us to notice that everyone is God's child.

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