Justice? Amen!

“‘Cursed be anyone who perverts the justice due to the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen.’

Deuteronomy 27:19

Stating God's law in the negative has a sobering affect on the conscience. It doesn't sit well with coddled modern day overly psychologized westerners, but it seems fine for God to do so. Maybe we ought to consider that a wise and sovereign God knows best what we need to hear, how we need to hear it,  and how we need to take it to heart!

All I know is that much of my lifestyle works against appropriating this command to seek justice for the lowest and neediest in my society. I live in the country of Affluentia. It's easy to pull into my garage after work and ignore the needs of the world as the door goes down. Yet even in the little bedroom community in which I reside I know there is injustice. I see it. There are people less than a mile from me living in poverty. There are fatherless children being raised in poverty by single moms who are immigrants (maybe legal, maybe not). There are elderly people barely scraping by, some of them suffering in a system that encourages family to hand them over to be "cared for" by strangers. Some of them never hear from their family again. It's a whole marginalizing, broken system that covets and coddles the upper and middle-class "haves" while doing little to care (and I'm not talking about financial entitlement... that would be an idolatrous mistake) for the neediest among us.

We need hearts for the lowest in our world... hearts of love... gospel hearts like Jesus has. The gospel brings hope, and the Body of Christ, the church, brings love, support, and help to the immigrant, the orphan, the abandoned, and the elderly. God, help us to say 'Amen' to Your call to care because You gave all You had extravagantly for loathsome sinners when Your only Son was offered up to save our impoverished souls!