I am participating in the 31 Days of Free Writes October challenge. This is meant to be a free write, which means: no editing, no over-thinking, no worrying about perfect grammar or punctuation. (Confession: I *may* not be able to resist spell-checking!)
But as for you, return to your God, hold fast to love and justice, and wait continually for your God. (Hosea 12:6)
Today’s prompt: Hold
Hosea 12:6, depending on what version you read, says “hold fast to love and justice.” The context involves directing someone who has strayed from God.
It seems to me this is a critical directive for our times. In my morning job, I summarize news stories about legal matters. Given the current political environment, many of the stories involve a judge or legislator who has taken it upon themselves to make a decision about another person based on them being different, or them having some quality/life situation they don’t understand, that they don’t think is “right for our country.”
I think what bothers me about these decisions (sending someone back to a country they left as a baby, where they know no one and have no means to support themselves, for example), is that they do hew to a strict legal line but seem to reflect absolutely zero mercy or love.
Our daily lives need to reflect this too (and that’s really what struck me and what I intended to write about before the paragraph above manifested itself in my thinking).
How am I, in my daily walk, being merciful? In a national time that is characterized by meanness and anger, how do I balance the fact that we have to uphold laws in order for our nation and world to not totally deteriorate yet humans at their core need love and mercy?
I’m not sure if “straying” from a faith we love comes FROM losing sight of love and justice or causes us to become distant from love and justice.
Something tells me being mindful of both love and justice will align us more closely with faith, no matter how or when we strayed.
Wife of one, Mom of two, Friend of many. My pronouns are she/her/hers.
I can’t help but think of Micah 6:8. Those words seem to give us such clear directions of how to live in the world.
Oh yes – I agree!