a small world
Our church tries to stick together on the scripture reading each week and this week’s verses included one of my favorites. Micah 6:8 - Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly (responsively, intentionally) with God. These three threads, when braided together, have served as a dipstick for my faith walk off and on for a long time. When in doubt, when it’s time to re-focus, when I wonder what I’m doing here, I like to look at my life through the lens of Micah 6:8.
Yesterday Gregg prompted us to consider ways we have picked the braid apart. Having been in the good company of Quakers from across a historical divide this weekend, being a person who interacts with people of different faiths on a daily basis, and as a Protestant in the employ of the Sisters of Providence…during open worship I was thinking about the many streams of faith that will some day “converge.” Feeling sad and confused by the divisions, the disagreements, the wounds we have inflicted on each other by our arrogance and gracelessness, I felt this phrase rise to the surface: “The edges are too sharp and the world we've cut out for ourselves is too small.”
I see our version of who is in, and who is out, as too cut and dried. It’s harsh to the point of callousness. It’s too piteously small. It lacks imagination. It is so homogeneous and self-serving that it’s just plain boring.
Yesterday morning in the quiet I asked God, Am I being arrogant and graceless too?
Yes…and no… Not usually but...in some cases, maybe. In one case, very likely.
Lord, teach me to do justice, help me lavish mercy on others wherever I go. I wait, longing for love and grace to flush pettiness from my spirit.
Lord Jesus Christ,
Son of God,
have mercy on me.
Yesterday Gregg prompted us to consider ways we have picked the braid apart. Having been in the good company of Quakers from across a historical divide this weekend, being a person who interacts with people of different faiths on a daily basis, and as a Protestant in the employ of the Sisters of Providence…during open worship I was thinking about the many streams of faith that will some day “converge.” Feeling sad and confused by the divisions, the disagreements, the wounds we have inflicted on each other by our arrogance and gracelessness, I felt this phrase rise to the surface: “The edges are too sharp and the world we've cut out for ourselves is too small.”
I see our version of who is in, and who is out, as too cut and dried. It’s harsh to the point of callousness. It’s too piteously small. It lacks imagination. It is so homogeneous and self-serving that it’s just plain boring.
Yesterday morning in the quiet I asked God, Am I being arrogant and graceless too?
Yes…and no… Not usually but...in some cases, maybe. In one case, very likely.
Lord, teach me to do justice, help me lavish mercy on others wherever I go. I wait, longing for love and grace to flush pettiness from my spirit.
Lord Jesus Christ,
Son of God,
have mercy on me.
posted by kathy at
9:31 PM
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