With

You mortals, the Lord has told you what is good.

This is what the Lord requires from you:

to do what is right, to love mercy,

and to live humbly with your God.

--Micah 6:8 (God's Word for Students)

Going to a Christian school, in elementary along with the rest of my classmates, I had to memorize bible verses and while a lot of them were really good, one year the school motto was this verse from Micah. As it was the school motto, basically everything was built around it and you can pretty much imagine my frustration in the redundancy of this verse.

Every time I hear it, I am taken back to the school year and all the projects and posters and homework assignments and art scenes... all affiliated with the verse. It became so engraved in my mind that it became an eye-rolling affair whenever Micah 6:8 was mentioned.

Live justly, walk mercy and live humbly with your God. I could quote it in my sleep.

I know that having moderate frustration when it comes to the bible really isn't a good thing but too much of anything can drive you nuts. That's what my school did, but fortunately when we age, we tend to view things in a different light.

As soon as that passage in Punk Monk (a book I just recently finished) mentioned it, I expectantly braced myself for the monotonous sensation that always seems to put my brain into standby mode until the memories of elementary dropped out. This time though what I read made me think and didn't frustrate my frazzled (with regard to this verse) mind. Once they took it apart and pieced the life-changing bits together, it really is a loaded verse, despite what I thought in my past.

The first part of the verse refers to how we are to act with others: A big part of the book was referring to justice and mercy in how it related to the boiler rooms that were being established in the United Kingdom (they're now beginning all over the world: a testament to God's phenomenal grace, love and sick planning).

To live justly means we should be angered by what is wrong; to be merciful means to stand with those who are wronged. To exercise these different concepts with reference to those who we walk on this earth with: to show God's love through the mercy and justice that he places as a turning point in our lives.

In the bible, it mentions a lot about voicing for the widows and the orphans, the down-and-out and those who cannot stand for themselves. The hobos, the drug addicts, those who have handicaps both mentally and physically and the people that are lost and broken. We are to exercise justice to stand for their cause and mercy to give them a cup of water and as we do this, Jesus said we do the same to him (Matt. 25:34-36).

The beauty of aid is that mercy and justice seem to come together on the cross when otherwise they would seem to be polar opposites. I mean when you think about them with reference to their definitions:

mercy |ˈmərsē| noun ( pl. -cies) 1 compassion or forgiveness shown toward someone whom it is within one's power to punish or harm
justice |ˈjəstis| noun 1 just behavior or treatment : a concern for justice, peace, and genuine respect for people. • the quality of being fair and reasonable :the justice of his case.

they seem completely opposite... bringing people to account for the things they've done wrong vs. ceasing to care about the problems they have had in their past (Rom. 5:8).

One of the things the book said about mercy is that it 'is about the designed, the loved, the created; not about the deserving'. I mean, to think that people shouldn't have to fill out a form in order to be granted mercy- to experience a hierarchy of sin and problems in order to find out the list in how they are to be granted mercy.

Fortunately it doesn't work like that. God says that as long as you are really feeling dreadful about this and you want to lay aside your burdens and take up peace, mercy is totally granted to you. Just like that. No gimmicks. And as we are granted mercy, we join his troupe of the redeemed. Pretty nice, I'd say so.

But one thing that really got me and kinda drove a lance into that wall that I had set up for myself about that verse; that had allowed me to see this verse in a different light was a simple word in the last stanza. The second half took me by supreme surprise as everyday words were transferred into something to simple that it's amazing we over look these phenomenal 'ah-ha!' moments.

... and to walk humbly with your God.

-- Micah 6:8b (NIV)

I can try and summarize it from the book, but I think it would be best if I just quoted it directly.

Journeying God

Kanye West san that 'Jesus Walks'. From the Bible it does seem that he takes journeys. In Eden he walks in the cool of the evening with Adam and Eve (Genesis 3:8). He walks with some of the disciples on the Emmaus Road (Luke 24:13-35). In Micah 6:8, which we considered in the previous chapter on justice, the prophet calls the people to 'walk humbly with your God.'

God is mobile and calls us to go with him, to 'come and follow' (Matthew 4:19), to take up our cross (Matthew 16:24), to 'go' (Matthew 28:19). Micah's call is to walk 'with your God' - not behind him, away from him, or crawling in the dust at his feet. He invites us to walk with him. The sense of relationship is breathtaking.

-- Punk Monk (p. 212)

Oh how he loves us. We are not the slimy beasts that we seem to set ourselves up as... God grants justice and mercy to us like we are to do for others and we are made new. We are called to walk with him as his children, as those whom he loves so much that he sent his own flesh to save his worldly family.

This is hitting me harder than before as the King of Everything wants me to take a stroll down main street with him, viewing the world as beautiful and worthy of redemption as long as people grow to understand this power as I did with this verse.

I'm glad that he's still doing a good work in us for how would we be worthy to be considered his otherwise?

With him. Not 'crawling in the dust at his feet'. As messed up as I am, I think I may be able to manage that-- what about you?