These words that God spoke through the prophet Micah (8th century BCE) have captivated me. And I will cop to the fact that you might see these words in some form on a shirt I am wearing or a mug from which I am drinking. For me, this is an elegant personal mission statement of faith: Do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God.
It also strikes me that when we, as God’s people, embody this, when we become this, we become alms to God. How and what we say or do for the sake of justice, done humbly in our walk with our God is alms to our God. How and what we say or do in kindness, done humbly in our walk with our God is alms to our God. In my life, I have been the recipient of such alms and I have been given the opportunity to offer such alms. Either way has been humbling in a grace filled way. Oh the stories I could tell, but in this space, let me share one here of others becoming alms to God as a blessing to my family.
I grew up in a lower middle-class family which struggled to make ends meet. My father, the primary wage-earner as a diesel mechanic for a trucking company, was injured (almost killed) in a work-related accident when I was a primary school child. I remember vividly being brought into the emergency room to see my Dad because they thought he might not make it. He would be out of work for more than a year. And our family slipped into poverty. The insurance, the union benefits, whatever the company was willing to do, was not enough. I see this now as a matter of justice. In retrospect I remember my parents quiet fear, trying to protect their son. But I also remember people coming to the door and being invited in—coworkers, neighbors, friends, and family. They brought food. They brought kindness, hugs, jokes, laughter, love. I discovered much later that some had humbly slipped my father envelopes of money. My family survived because of the kindness of others. I do not know the motivations of those who came to our door, if they were faith-based or otherwise. Frankly that doesn’t matter to me. Our Lutheran theology of the Two Kingdoms gives us freedom to embrace the justice and kindness offered through faith-based or secular motivations. God is at work in both.
The life, death, and resurrection of God’s own son, Jesus the Christ, is the ultimate example of Micah 6:8. Jesus incarnated those words of Micah. And hence, it is a foremost encouragement to us to do the same: Do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God. May God give you opportunity to become alms of justice and kindness, and may God open you to receive the same as we all walk humbly with our God.
