social justice – Mum's devotional

O, Dayspring!

December 21st

O Dayspring, brightness of the everlasting light, Son of Justice, come to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death!

O Oriens* antiphon

These are the last words of David:

“The inspired utterance of David son of Jesse,
the utterance of the man exalted by the Most High,
the man anointed by the God of Jacob,
the hero of Israel’s songs:

The Spirit of the Lord spoke through me;
his word was on my tongue.
The God of Israel spoke,
the Rock of Israel said to me:
‘When one rules over people in righteousness,
when he rules in the fear of God,
he is like the light of morning at sunrise
on a cloudless morning,
like the brightness after rain
that brings grass from the earth.’
If my house were not right with God,
surely he would not have made with me an everlasting covenant,
arranged and secured in every part;
surely he would not bring to fruition my salvation
and grant me my every desire.”

2 Samuel 23:1-5 (NIV)

*If this sounds familiar it’s because O Come, O Come Emmanuel is based on the Greater [‘O’] Antiphons. As I may have said before, they are very, very old, and have been translated, paraphrased and re-translated many times.

Here is another John Wesley hymn: literally the only version of Hark! The Herald Angels Sing I found that I liked, by the U.S. Army Band of all things. (I think it’s just because it needs a lot of deep voices, but most of the men’s choruses that did it used the Willcocks arrangement, which I loathe with a passion.)

…and here is an image of another spiral galaxy, M74, from last year’s Hubble Advent Calendar in The Atlantic.

Here’s this year’s calendar, if anyone’s interested.

Kierkegaard’s tripwire

November 23rd

One who is righteous has many adversities, but the LORD rescues him from them all. He protects all his bones; not one of them is broken.

Psalm 34:19-20 (CSB)

Now and then someone speaks of “suffering punishment, when one does the Good.” How is that possible? From whom shall that punishment come? Certainly not from God! Is it, then, from the world — so that when in its wisdom the world is mistaken, it rewards the bad and punishes the Good? And yet no, it is not as that word “world” implies. For the word “world” sounds great and terrifying, and yet it must obey the same law as the most insignificant and miserable man. But even if the world gathered all its strength, there is one thing it is not able to do, it can no more punish an innocent one that it can put a dead person to death.

To be sure the world has power. It can lay many a burden upon the innocent one. It can make his life sour and laborious for him. It can rob him of his life. But it cannot punish an innocent one. How wonderful, here is a limit, a limit that is invisible, like a line that is easy to overlook with the senses, but one that has the strength of eternity in resisting any infringement. This may be overlooked by the world whose attention is focused upon that which is big —and the limit is insignificant, is for the present, a quiet-mannered nobody, but yet it is there. Perhaps it is completely hidden from the eyes of the world. For that, too, can be a part of the innocent one’s suffering, that the world’s injustice takes on the appearance of punishment — in the world’s eyes. But the limit is nevertheless there, and is in spit of all the strongest. And even if all the world rose up in tumult and even if everything were thrown into confusion: the limit is nevertheless there. And on the one side of it with the innocent ones is justice; and on the other side toward the world is an eternal impossibility of punishing an innocent one. Even if the world wishes to annihilate an innocent man and put him out of the way, it cannot put the limit out of the way, even though it be invisible. (Perhaps it is just on that account.)

from Kierkegaard’s Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing (Ch. 5)

Or does this already have a clever name like Chesterton’s fence, or Jacob’s ladder? I like ‘tripwire,’ but I’m open to suggestions.

The thoughtful saint

February 25th

However, there should not be any poor among you, for the LORD will surely bless you in the land that he is giving you as an inheritance, if you carefully obey him by keeping all these commandments that I am giving you today.

Deuteronomy 15:4-5 (NET)

There is no subject more intimately interesting to modern people than man’s relationship to man; but men get impatient when they are told that the first requirement is that they should love God first and foremost. “The first of all the commandments is… thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.” In every crisis in our lives, is God first in our love? in every perplexity of conflicting duties, is He first in our leading? “And the second is like, namely, this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” Remember the standard, “as I have loved you.” I wonder where the best of us are according to that standard? How many of us have turned away over and over again in disgust at men, and when we get alone with the Lord Jesus He speaks no word, but the memory of Him is quite sufficient to bring the rebuke—“as I have loved you.”

It takes severe training to think habitually along the lines Jesus Christ has laid down, although we act on them impulsively at times. How many of us are letting Jesus Christ take us into His school of thinking? The saint who is thoughtful is like a man fasting in the midst of universal intoxication. Men of the world hate a thoughtful saint. They can ridicule a living saint who does not think, but a thinking saint—I mean of course, on who lives rightly as well—is the annoyance, because the thinking saint has formed the Mind of Christ and re-echoes it. Let us from this time forth determine to bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.

from Oswald Chambers’ Biblical Ethics
(the last chapter, whatever number that is)

(Social) Justice

February 23rd

…if you really change your ways and your actions, if you act justly toward one another, if you no longer oppress the alien, the fatherless, and the widow and no longer shed innocent blood in this place or follow other gods, bringing harm on yourselves, I will allow you to live in this place…

Jeremiah 7:6-7 (HCSB)

When you look around the world today, the division is overwhelming. We are divided along so many lines. Rich/poor, black/white, liberal/conservative, male/female— the list could go on and on. Sadly, within the church you will see the same thing. Baptism, spiritual gifts, and style of worship are just a few of the things we are divided over.

There are elements of society that seek to separate, divide, and demean people, and these forces are at work continually. You can see these forces during a divorce, through cyberbullying, or even in the national health care debate. The bottom line is we are divided. We live in such a self-focused society, continually encouraged to “stand up for ourselves” and “look out for number one,” when actually we need to think of others, see their perspective, and look out for those who may not be able to look out for themselves.

Sometimes instead of trying to be understood, we need to try to understand.

From Toby McKeehan’s (Tobymac) City on Our Knees

…and, since it goes with the rest of Jeremiah 7 (and Matthew 21, obviously), Michael Card’s The Lamb is a Lion on Youtube and Spotify respectively.

Again, I haven’t read the whole book, but I didn’t have a text to go with this scripture, and I picked it up this morning and it said exactly what I’d wanted to say. (And Jesus Freaks – which is like a modern version of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs without all the creepy anti-Catholicism – was good, so it can’t be terrible. Right?)