A favorite Bible verse of many Unitarian Universalists is this one from the book of Micah: “And what does God require of you, but to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?” — Micah 6:8
Reflect: What does it means to love mercy? How might you show a love of mercy in your daily life?
Suggested reading for that month’s covenant group:
From The Third Reconstruction: How a Moral Movement Is Overcoming the Politics of Division and Fear by Rev. Dr. William J. Barber III:
My vocation, I was learning, was to live an answer to this fundamental biblical question with my own life.
“He has showed you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”
What never changes from age to age with God? What is always God’s primary focus for His people? What transcends our labels, our political alliances, and our situational ethics? What is greater than the political majority at any given moment?
Do justice echoed in every ripple of the great river of resistance. Treat people right, treat communities right, treat the least of these right. Love mercy, I heard my faith tradition say. Love helping people. Love building a government that cares for all. Love the least, the left out, the lost. Enjoy lifting those who have been abandoned. Get excited about rescuing those who have failed. And this: Walk humbly before your God. Never think as a nation that your bombs, missiles, and weaponry make you greater than God. Never become a nation that’s unable to repent when you have mistreated the vulnerable. Never become so arrogant in your wealth that you refuse to lift the poor. Never become so vain that you pray for God to bless America and forget that God is not your exclusive property.
Do justice. Love mercy. Walk humbly before your God. […]
I came to see that in our shifting times, as so many were trying to promote the benign and anemic Christianity that reduces the image of God to a mere sanctifier of our nation, I was called to preach. It seemed as if I heard God’s voice saying, “Come out of the exile of false religion. Come out of the exile of the religion of idolatry and self-worship, which can only sustain oppression. Come out of the exile of religion that serves itself and avoids real people, the vulnerable people whom God adores. Come out of the religion that has liberally removed itself from the unchanging values of God and dared to call itself conservative.”