Keep Standing

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In this final part of our Esther teaching series, Stand Up: How to Fight Injustice, we are reminded that since injustice never sleeps, we can’t either.  Over the course of this conversation I offer four ways we can make sure our lives are always ready to fight injustice.  Keep reading to find out what they are.

 

Keep Standing

Last weekend was the annual Relay for Life Walk event.  While it has gotten pared back a bit over the years, the original vision for the event was for it to last for a full 24-hours.  One of the original slogans that accompanied the all-night walk was that we could walk throughout the night because “cancer never sleeps.”  The big idea here is that cancer is always on and so we must be also.  We must be ever vigilant to halt its life-stealing advance.  Because it never takes a day-off, we can’t either.  This kind of militaristic sentiment works for a while, but eventually people start to get tired.  Sometimes the very advances to which their support of cancer research has contributed allows some folks to relax a bit and let up on the pressure.  It’s tough to stay motivated to support a single cause for a long period of time. Read the rest…

Digging in Deeper: Daniel 6:10-11

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“When Daniel knew that the document had been signed, he went to his house where he had windows in his upper chamber open toward Jerusalem.  He got down on his knees three times a day and prayed and gave thanks before his God, as he had done previously.  Then these men came by agreement and found Daniel making petition and plea before his God.”  (ESV – Read the chapter)

Daniel had been doing this three times a day in this same place for years.  This time, though, had to feel a bit different.  This was the first time he knew he was actively breaking the law by doing it.  And yet, the place and the pattern were both well-worn in his life.  At the time to which he was very much accustomed, Daniel got down on his knees in front of the window in his upper room and prayed.  Shortly afterwards–as he knew would happen–he was arrested and hauled before the king. Read the rest…

Morning Musing: 1 Corinthians 4:3-4

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“But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court.  In fact, I do not even judge myself.  For I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted.  It is the Lord who judges me.”  (ESV – Read the chapter)

“You can’t judge me!” may be one of the premier slogans of modern, western culture.  A hundred years ago, what the people around you thought mattered a great deal.  In many cultures around the world today this is still the case.  An individual’s identity comes primarily from their social structure.  In modern American culture, we are taught to place a high value on choosing a path that explicitly rejects and even makes a mockery of the social order in which we live.  The bravest souls are the ones who take what’s expected of them and throw it in the trash to be “true to themselves” just like everybody else…
Read the rest…

Digging in Deeper: Micah 7:7

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“But as for me, I will look to the Lord; I will wait for the God of my salvation; my God will hear me.”  (ESV – Read the chapter)

Do you ever feel like the world is going crazy around you?  We hear more news today than any people ever in the whole history of the world.  We know more about what’s going on in the remotest parts of the world…and most of it seems to be bad.  The culture around us is increasingly sensualized as is amply demonstrated in the media.  The political divide only ever gets sharper.  Opposing sides of issues can hardly have civil conversations anymore.  Students have been taught for years that human life is of little value and the fruits of this are coming to bear in the news of school shootings happening all the time including another tragic one just last week.  Psychological disorders are common.  People are more and more addicted to just about everything–social media, exercise, body image, pornography, opioids, alcohol, stuff.  Consumerism and materialism are rising to levels unheard of in human history.  What do we do in the midst of the filth storm that seems to be raging around us? Read the rest…