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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.

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