What Does God Ask of Me?

Micah 6:8

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.  Micah 6:8 

This verse from Micah has come up a lot for me lately. I have seen it referenced in blogs that I subscribe to, I quoted it (after looking it up) to my daughter in a conversation on Saturday and then I quoted it again during Children's Chapel on Sunday. I began to think that there is a message for me here! It takes a lot to get through to me!

I've been thinking about what the message is for me. The blogs referenced doing justice. During my conversation with Cassie (my daughter) I quoted this for the love part. God wants us to love everyone - even those that we think sin more than we do. Then on Sunday the Gospel lesson was about Jesus telling people to be humble. Yes, I covered the entire verse! God is really subtle.

The conversation during Children's Chapel had us digging into what this verse means for the kids. We came up with our own paraphrase: Do right, Be a friend, Be helpful. I spoke to the mom of a six year-old girl after the service and said what a joy it was to have her in the group. She got the message; she was the one who came up with most of the words in our paraphrase. Mom said that her daughter needed the message this week. So, maybe I wasn't the only one this message was for, but this six year-old girl helped me to understand what this means for me.

Act justly - I started to think that I don't fight for justice much; I don't think its my calling but how am I suppose to live this out. Act justly means do right - which means that I am suppose to do the right thing in all circumstances. I experienced an example of this today, compliments of my husband, Dave. We decided to go to the Buffalo Zoo today; a bad choice, everyone else decided to go to the zoo today. So, we were stuck in a very long line of cars crawling towards the zoo. As you can imagine, many drivers were getting impatient which led some to make U-turns and others cut-off other cars. Dave said he wouldn't do that, since it wasn't right so he turned right and went around the block. We'll go to the zoo another day. This is a little thing, but Dave chose to do the right thing; he chose not to mess-up traffic because it was more convenient. So, for me this is not so much about fighting for equal rights or some other justice issue (as important as that is), but doing the right thing every day, in every circumstance.

Love mercy - Okay, I try to love everyone, I fail often but I think love is the most important thing I do. But, am I a friend to everyone? I told my daughter the people that I respect the most are those that think someone has done something terribly wrong but they still minister to that person. An example is a person that thinks that homosexuality is a sin, but still ministers to homosexual HIV/AIDS patients. That is a person who takes Jesus' command to love others and follows it completely! Do I follow Jesus' command so completely? I think I have lots of room for improvement.

Walk humbly - Am I humble? And do I walk with God? I think this not only about arrogance, but about humbling oneself to serve others. I serve others as part of my job and usually joyfully, but I don't think I serve my family as willingly. I need to remember that showing love and doing "my job" as a parent is humbling myself, and part of my walk with God. But it isn't just service that is part of my walk with God, everyday I should be walking with God. Everything I do is to be part of my walk with God. If I put God in the center of everything I do perhaps I will act justly, love mercy and walk humbly.

It comes full circle! And in case I had any doubt, the six year-old girl is writing a poem for me. I can't wait to read it!