What does God want?

Fiona Reynolds January 29, 2021 0 0

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Micah 6: 3-8 (NRSVA)

3 ‘O my people, what have I done to you?
    In what have I wearied you? Answer me!
4 For I brought you up from the land of Egypt,
    and redeemed you from the house of slavery;
and I sent before you Moses,
    Aaron, and Miriam.
5 O my people, remember now what King Balak of Moab devised,
    what Balaam son of Beor answered him,
and what happened from Shittim to Gilgal,
    that you may know the saving acts of the Lord.’

6 ‘With what shall I come before the Lord,
    and bow myself before God on high?
Shall I come before him with burnt-offerings,
    with calves a year old?
7 Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
    with tens of thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,
    the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?’
8 He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
    and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
    and to walk humbly with your God?

There can be times on our journey of faith when we can feel overwhelmed by how God has touched our lives. We can look back — rehearing the stories of our ancestors-of-faith, reliving the times when we have known God personally — and wonder how we can ever repay God. Such a transactional instinct is not surprising, given our economy-driven lives, but it is not what God wants. God is much more interested in us ‘paying it forward’. In our transformed lives we are to love others because we have first been loved by God, by doing justice, loving kindness and walking humbly with God.

PRAYER:

God of every moment of our lives, as we give you heartfelt thanks for all the times you have shaped our story with love, we ask for enough peace in our souls to know that we need not repay you in kind. May we, instead, use the knowledge and experience of your loving presence to reach out to others in the spirit of that same love: working for justice and spreading acts of loving kindness, all sustained by our daily walk with you. AMEN.