Skip to main content

What Do You Put In Your Cupboard

 Wash and make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight; stop doing wrong.  Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed.  Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow. (Isaiah 1:16-17)

          God’s call to Israel through Isaiah. It doesn’t promise salvation, but it is God’s solution for that country going through difficult times. It speaks to the people, as individuals. The nation cannot be the “yourselves” that He is speaking to since He was speaking to one nation at the time. He’s speaking to individual people. The first step to solving their problems was for them to cleanse themselves of their sins. A few verses earlier, He said He would make them whiter than snow. There seem to be two sides to this equation, God’s side that makes them whiter than snow, and the individual’s side of washing and making themselves clean.

          If you moved into a place with broken cabinets and weren’t a carpenter, you would have someone remove them and put in new cabinets. That’s God’s part. After that, would you put rusty cans, leaky packages, or rotten food in those cupboards? No, you make sure that bad food doesn’t go in the cupboards. That’s our part – removing the garbage.

          What we want to stock that cupboard with, instead, are good, healthy foods that will make us strong, resilient, and healthy. We need a big can of “Doing What is Right,” a jumbo size jar of “Justice,” Several supersized boxes of “Defend the Oppressed,” and gallons of “Cause of the Fatherless” and “Plead the Case of the Widow.”

          What makes this a little tougher is that the oppressed, the widows, and the orphans may not be the same oppressed, widows, and orphans of two thousand years ago. Back then, conquered people, widows, and orphans had no means of support, nowhere to turn for justice. Those groups still exist, but there are other groups that also need our support.

          So who are the widow, the orphan, and the oppressed. I believe it fits the same pattern as the “neighbor” from the story of the Good Samaritan. The widow, the orphan, and the oppressed are anyone you trip over who needs help, whether or not they deserve that help.

Let me give an example: I lived all of my life with my father – more years than my mother did. Had my mother survived him, she would have gotten money from the Social Security Administration as his widow. That income isn’t available to me. So, I can sympathize with those homosexuals who live together for years but haven’t been permitted survivor’s benefits. I believe homosexuality to be 100% wrong, but it seems to me that there is justice in granting survivor’s benefits to one long-term companion of another sort – if conditions are met.

Another example, perhaps even better and harder. Is there someone you don’t like? Plead their case against you to yourself.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Virgin?

           Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel. (Isaiah 7:14)           This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. (Matthew 1:18)           But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end.”            “How will this be,” Mary asked the...
Post a Comment
Read more

Saved?

  I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.” (John 10:28-30) “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, “I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’ ” (Matthew 7:21-23) Not at all! Let God be true, and every human being a liar. As it is written: “So that you may be proved right when you speak and prevail when you judge.” (Romans 3:4)   What conclusion do you draw when someone who was raised in a Christian family and church, perhaps even playing a significant role in a chur...
Post a Comment
Read more

Meditations of the Heart

  May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. (Psalm19:14)           As I started writing this post, I noted that the meditations of my heart are all over the mental landscape, from a hub where eight superhighways come together to a lunar or nuclear landscape. Do you see my error? The moment I read the word meditation , I think about thoughts. But what’s described here is the meditations of our hearts ; our wills.           While the meditations of our minds may be all over the place, the meditations of our wills tend to be a little more stable by the time we are adults. We no longer tend to want to pursue the ten separate careers we did in any given day as children. Part of this is humble acceptance of reality. We come to understand that we can’t do it all. I think another part of it is disappointmen...
Post a Comment
Read more