The 20th Sunday after Pentecost (I don't know where the year has gone but there are only 6 more! )

God 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?          
Micah 6:8

I’m always a little  nervous when I get through all the psalms for the morning and don’t get a verse....  Have I not been paying attention? Maybe I won’t get one and I’ll have to make it up, to choose for myself? But I read on and todays verse appeared in the Old Testament reading.  I began to sit with it without getting an image, which is rare, and then this one came to me - this lovely, serene picture that I have on the side of my refrigerator. I  fought against it a little - how could it be this grand place!? How does this go with walking humbly and doing kindness and loving justice?  Then I thought of a lovely picture that is also part of my current refrigerator collage, of a monk walking in a cloister. Surely that was the one to use! But what I clearly got was “No, this one.”  In the course of my meditation I began to see why. I had looked on the back of the post card and found that it is the interior of the National Cathedral. What better place to remember the words of Micah than where the powerful come together, where the nation gathers in times of tragedy?  When we are walking in the cloister it is easy to remember the words of Micah and to do them.  But what about when we are involved in our day to day lives - when we are ticked off or bone tired or frightened or bereaved: to love kindness when we are treated with contempt, to love justice and when we are maligned to walk humbly with our God? It’s the perfect picture. Did the individual who finagled money out of the state budget fiasco for a new Charger stadium while education and in-home health services are  slashed do justice?  Is allowing the building of Jewish settlements that threatens the peace  process in the Middle East between the Jews and the Palestinians walking humbly with their God?  This is not a Christian mandate but words spoken by the Jewish prophet Micah to the Jewish nation. People, you know what God requires of you, you know what is good. It’s always been  harder, whether in our personal lives or in our lives as a nation. to do than to quote. (You may see this as a Saints and Seasons one day! ) 

Happy 10-10-10! Today may we truly do justice and love kindness and walk humbly with our God.