Walking with God
Micah 6
6 With what shall I come before the LORD and bow down before the exalted God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old?
7 Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?
8 He has showed you, O man, 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.
- NIV
Why do we believe Church on a Sunday, Bible study on a Wednesday and ten percent of our income (for those of us who are generous) pleases God? That this makes us alright with God and anything more, like helping out at the annual Church garage sale, gives us bargaining power. I did this for you God, so you better make sure that I get that next promotion… Our relationship with God is not a contract, is not up for review and is certainly not negotiable. This relationship is unique, it is a covenant but more importantly it is a covenant of grace, whereby God not only was himself but he stood in for us as well.
So why do we cheapen it by doing just what the Israelites did before us and try to buy it? I think because the alternative is so vast, so unparalleled and so beyond our ability that we could spend a lifetime exploring it and still only have grasped a drop of its ocean. The first we can contain and place with in a box and say you are that in my world. The second we can not only not find a box to fit it in; it threatens the fabric of our world pushing it further than it has ever gone before.
Act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with your God. How do we respond to a God who says this to us? How do we respond to a God who says this to us, speaking directly into the world we live in? These are not points on a checklist we can tick off at the end of the day and say we have done. I acted justly, I loved mercy and I walked humbly today. They are ideas that propel our actions, continually harass and bite at the heel of, pushing them towards God’s own. This is so that we might be all that we can be not because we have to, not because there is no alternative but because nothing else will satisfy us.
But what do we do once we realise this, that there is nothing else, that this will be our life’s work, our magnum opus. How do we turn these ideas of uncontained possibilities into everyday life? When our feet touch the ground again and the alarm goes off and we are late for work and there are bills to be paid. How do we keep the dreams alive? I pray the answer is not, we don’t.
