Psalm 89:14: Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne;
love and faithfulness go before you.
Speak up speak out. What exactly does that mean? God’s heart for justice… Sounds nice, but what do you want me to do with that, exactly?
Hey friends! My apologies for not writing more. I’m going to try to start blogging regularly again. We’ll see how it goes. Anyways, I was approached over a month ago to partake in an event with the tag line “Speak up, speak out,” an event to convey God’s heart for justice. I was asked to create a sculpture that pertained to the event in a live setting. Essentially, they want me to sit in a room where everyone can see me and make something beautiful and powerful… I’ll let you in on a secret. I’m terrified. How am I supposed to do that when I have no clue what God’s heart for justice even means? But I agreed and the event is now two days away and I have exactly zero good ideas for what I want to do. Great planning, right? So I did what any good Christian would do in this situation. I googled it. And this is what I found. God’s justice is one of His many attributes that the Bible mentions. God’s heart for justice has to do with His intention for us as humans to help other humans that have not what we have. We are called to equate the gap of the poor in wealth, spirit, love, hope, holiness… The Bible commands us to care about the poor saying, “The righteous care about justice for the poor, but the wicked have no such concern.” (Psalm 29:7) But here’s the clincher. We’re not supposed to just care. We’re called to act. A man can say to himself, “it’s so sad there’s poor people” but if he does nothing, he is just as wicked as the man who has no concern at all. If you lost your cell phone, you’d be concerned, right? I would. That thing has my whole life on it. And what do you do when you lose your phone? I know I, at least, run around frantically searching until I find it. I’m concerned, so I take action. If I am babysitting and one of the kids gets hurt, I panic a little on the inside. But I put on a brave face, clean up the scrapes and blood, bandage it up, and send the child off to take on the world again. I’m concerned and I take action. If the lost phone wasn’t my own or the child was fifteen years old and able to put a bandage on their own knee, I wouldn’t be that concerned and therefore not do anything about it. So you see, when I say that a man that expresses concern for the poor but does nothing is just as wicked as the man that expresses no concern at all, I am implying that real concern would invoke real action. A sin of omission, not doing anything, is just as serious as sins of commission, such as being an oppressor of the poor. So what does this mean for believers? We understand now that it means we have to act, but what exactly does that look like? I don’t think there is any perfect answer to that question, but it could mean going on a mission trip. It could look like a food drive in your community or a clothing donation box at your school. Or it could be learning more about this topic at an event like the one I will be sculpting at and helping to raise awareness for this calling on our lives as believers. This idea of God wanting His creation to achieve justice will only happen if we take action. Today’s blog comes with a challenge: speak up about this desire of God’s and speak out about what you are going to do about it.
