MEDITATION:
Written by Tim Keller, a contemporary pastor at Redeemer Church in New York City. This is an excerpt from his book “Generous Justice.”
The Hebrew word for “justice,” mishpat, occurs in its various forms more than 200 times in the Hebrew Old Testament. Its most basic meaning is to treat people equitably. It means acquitting or punishing every person on the merits of the case, regardless of race or social status. But mishpat means more than just the punishment of wrongdoing. It also means giving people their rights. It is giving people what they are due, whether punishment or protection or care. If you look at every place the word is used in the Old Testament, several classes of persons continually come up. Over and over again, mishpat describes taking up the care and cause of widows, orphans, immigrants, and the poor—those who have been called “the quartet of the vulnerable.” In premodern, agrarian societies, these four groups had no social power. They lived at subsistence level and were only days from starvation if there was any famine, invasion, or even minor social unrest. Today, this quartet would be expanded to include the refugee, the migrant worker, the homeless, and many single parents and elderly people. Any neglect shown to the needs of the members of this quartet is not called merely a lack of mercy or charity but a violation of justice, of mishpat. God loves and defends those with the least economic and social power, and so should we. That is what it means to “do justice.”
PRAYER:
Written by Alan Paton (1903-1988), a South African author and anti-apartheid activist.
God loves widows dearly. He talks about us a lot in the Bible…O Lord, open my eyes that I may see the needs of others
Open my ears that I may hear their cries;
Open my heart so that they need not be without succor;
Let me not be afraid to defend the weak because of the anger of the strong,
Nor afraid to defend the poor because of the anger of the rich.
Show me where love and hope and faith are needed,
And use me to bring them to those places.
And so open my eyes and my ears
That I may this coming day be able to do some work of peace for thee. Amen.
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