Skip to main content

Seek Good

           Seek good, not evil, that you may live. Then the Lord God Almighty will be with you, just as you say he is. Hate evil, love good; maintain justice in the courts. Perhaps the Lord God Almighty will have mercy on the remnant of Joseph. (Amos 5:14-15)

          Today’s passage seems to me to be filled with good snippets. Seek good, not evil, that you may live. Normally, I think of doing good, not seeking it. Maybe that’s why it tends to surprise me when it shows up. It strikes me that this snippet is also an attitude thing. Abraham Lincoln said, “Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be.” I’m not promoting prosperity thinking or looking at the world through rose-colored glasses, and I think political philosophies involving the song Imagine or anything else Utopianistic are delusional.

          But I know that I tend to go through life expecting the worst for myself. Sometimes, I feel like I’m in constant cringe-mode. When something good comes along, I’m pleasantly surprised while something bad gets the “it figures” response. This is in spite of (or possibly because of) the fact that I’ve been blessed. As I listen to people panicking over the pandemic and the political situation, I realize that I’m not alone in this. Could this be another of the basics that I need to master – learning to seek good? Would learning to not cringe but to at least allow for the possibility that something good might come of anything I do not add life?

          This brings to mind the dog I had before Grace. She was afraid of everything. More than once, as I thought about her or sat rubbing her ear, I realized the parallel in her relationship to me and mine to God. I would have loved to be able to have done something (that didn’t involve spending hours every day) to help her be less afraid. I imagine God would love to have me stop cringing every time He looks in my direction.

          And what if, in seeking good, I changed my thinking so that the things I think are bad, like not eating something I want to eat, and disciplining myself are seen as good? Change me, Lord! That would certainly add life.

          The other snippet that I’ll address today is the issue of maintaining justice in the courts. It’s easy to see that if we favor the rich, powerful, or famous justice is not maintained. It’s equally true that if we favor the poor, the weak, or the unknown, the apparent victim, the person with any specific skin color, gender, sexual preference – if we make “justice” have anything to do with the person and not with the legal merits of the case, we are not maintaining justice. Social justice is not justice at all.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The List

              Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,   through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance;   perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. (Romans 5:1-5)           Think about it. We have been justified. At least, we could be justified if we stopped insisting that our justification be based on our merits. We have peace with God, or could have peace if we stopped throwing temper tantrums. We have gained access into grace i...
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

Listen To Him

              The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your fellow Israelites. You must listen to him . (Deuteronomy 18:15)           Today, we switch from Jesus’ claims of “I am” to prophecies made about Him. My Bible platform is starting in Deuteronomy. I’d start in Genesis, where we would learn that the one who would save us would be a descendant of Eve (Genesis 3:15), of Noah (by default), Abram and Sara(Genesis 12:1-3). Isaac (Genesis 17:19), Jacob (Genesis 25:23), Judah (Genesis 29:8), and David (II Samuel 7:12-16). There were also references to a new covenant (Jer. 31:31-34; Ezek. 36:22-32). In addition, there were prophecies about when and where the prophet/Messiah would be born and what would happen to him.           Of course, naysayers will claim that Jesus’ life was retrofitted or reverse enginee...
Post a Comment
Read more