Micah 6:8

I was previewing a talk for the upcoming women’s Emmaus walk in our community, and I saw a familiar scripture in an entirely new way.

He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. (Micah 6:8:NIV)
But he’s already made it plain how to live, what to do, what God is looking for in men and women. It’s quite simple: Do what is fair and just to your neighbor, be compassionate and loyal in your love, and don’t take yourself too seriously – take God seriously. (The Message)
Before, I’ve always liked the passage, but I saw it as what to DO rather than also how to BE. I saw it as a description of how to live – what to do to obey God – rather than anything else or anything larger. For that reason I’ve always found this passage incomplete.

Then I listened to Beth’s “Changing our World” talk. She used this scripture as a backbone in the structure of what she had to say. (That may be the basic outline as given or her own innovation, I don’t know). Look at it this way:

• Walk Humbly with God – start with yourself
• Love mercy – or as The Message says, “be compassionate and loyal in your love” – expand your action to your neighbor
• Act justly – Then to the world.

Does that remind you of anything? As I listened to her, it reminded me of this:

Love the Lord you God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind…Love your neighbor as yourself. (from Matthew 22:36-40)
I’m not sure why I didn’t see the parallel before.

Walk humbly with your God – Love God
Act justly and love mercy – Love each other
The Micah passage is certainly about how we live our lives – it is about what we DO. In some ways it, in my mind, walks hand in hand with James 1:27 – “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself form being polluted by the world.” The Micah passage is also a passage about the way to BE – how to relate to God and to each other, as the passage from Matthew is.

Do you know what it is, JtM? It’s “cross-shaped.” I just didn’t expect to see that in Micah.

Image: Bird bath on the VA grounds that I found during a lunch walk yesterday. It reminds me to look more deeply.