Day 22: He Has Shown You

"He has shown you O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly, love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”

Micah 6:8 

The Jews were living with the threat of Assyrian invasion and occupation. For everyday people it was a time of hardship, unpredictability, and fear. Interestingly though, Micah reserves his most scathing remarks not for their enemies, but for Jews in positions of authority. They were profiting from their own people’s misery and dressing it up as spiritual good.

What do we do in that kind of scenario? How do we live with integrity when it is all rotten from the inside out? When so much is broken, what is the point of trying to do anything? 

Perhaps we feel that keenly in our world today, where greed seems to be rewarded and the rich are able to continue their wealth accumulation unabated, even when it wreaks havoc on the most vulnerable in society. 

But Micah 6:8 brings solace and hope to an otherwise bleak picture. There is a lot in life that is beyond us to immediately change, but this passage says, we can do something. Not everything, but not nothing either.  

Chapter 6 begins with a courtroom scene, with God responding to charges made against Him by his people and the whole Earth acting as the jury. It is implied that the people have said that God has wronged them.

God responds to these charges by listing the ways in which He has walked with them through it all; liberating them from slavery in Egypt, providing them with leaders and alluding to moments from their collective history to make the case that He has already “shown [them]…what is good”. He pursued justice on their behalf when they were powerless to change their circumstances as slaves, his merciful compassion overflowed to them in the face of their ever-present shortfalls, and his willingness to be associated with this mixed-up bunch of a people through all the seasons of their life was a marker of his great humility. 

He invites his people to do what he has done first, for no servant is greater than the master. As we seek to follow Jesus today, looking to him as our guide, what will it mean to act justly and fairly, embrace mercy and do so in a spirit of humility? 

Elli Walker