Yesterday, God challenged me. I have always been passionate about justice, originally wanting to study law, until I discovered that legality and justice aren’t the same thing. I now work in a church with some of the most marginalised people in my church, and outside of it, and I love it. But as I read Amos 8, a new challenge came to me.
This chapter expresses the LORD’s complaint that the Israelites were only being just at the times at which they were required or expected to be, to the point of waiting for those times to be over, so that they could live their lives as they wanted to:
Hear this, you who trample the needy
and do away with the poor of the land, saying,
“When will the New Moon be over
that we may sell grain,
and the Sabbath be ended
that we may market wheat?”—
skimping on the measure,
boosting the price
and cheating with dishonest scales,
buying the poor with silver
and the needy for a pair of sandals,
selling even the sweepings with the wheat.
(Amos 8:4-6)
There are many Christians today who are, or who claim to be passionate about justice for the poor and the oppressed. Many are involved in food banks, support groups and campaigning, myself included. However, the challenge I received, and now pass on to you is this:
How do you ensure that you care about the poor and the oppressed in your whole life, and not just in the specific slots in a week where you serve a particularly church ministry in this area? For some of you, that will be easier, since your ministry is not your full-time job, and you are able to take your passion for justice into that other job, perhaps advocating for your colleagues and supporting them when they face challenges. However, for myself, and others like me, for whom church ministry is our full-time job, this is a bigger challenge. It is very easy for me to separate out these things into ‘my job’ and not live this out on my day off or when I have finished work for the day.
For me it might simply involve being aware of how I respond to those individuals who I work with during my ministries outside of those particular times, concentrating just as much on how I can show them God’s love then as I do on a Wednesday evening or a Sunday service. It may be wider than that, serving my local community outside of my work, or campaigning for justice in my local area. These are things that I am still exploring, but I invite you to join in with this exploration for yourself, and ask God how you can share his heart for the poor and the oppressed outside of particular ministry ‘slots’.
repairerofwalls 