If I’m honest, summer 2020 lockdown included too much scrolling. Too often I reached for my phone and scrolled and scrolled and scrolled, past pandemic statistics, protests, half-true statements, videos without context, videos with too much context, riots, memes, and flash sales. Like a leashed dog wheezing next to her master on a motorbike, my mind scrambled to keep up with my ever-swiping thumb: I don’t trust this article. This one I believe. This one is insanity… or maybe it’s satire? Oh, Jesus would wear a mask. Oh wait, I guess he wouldn’t. Woah, great price for a blouse! But I read something about about child labor… How many kids…

Last week we examined how God’s people are to act justly. Now we turn our attention to the follow-up command of Micah 6:8: Love mercy. mercy /ˈməːsi/ noun compassion or forgiveness shown towards someone whom it is within one’s power to punish or harm. What’s not to love? Yet from a human perspective, mercy is hardly ‘fair’ and the Bible is full of such examples: It wasn’t fair when a city who burned, beheaded, and dismembered people, repented of their evil and were spared destruction. [Jonah 3] It wasn’t fair when David, leader of Israel, slept with a woman, had her innocent husband slayed, then utterly repented before God and…

The Bible is clear; as Christians we are to ‘defend the cause of the oppressed’. What seems less clear is how? And which injustices? How do we live out Micah 6:8? And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. Tragically, dauntingly, many are oppressed, many have been wronged, many are without a voice. Some injustices are public, splashed across the media. Others remain private, hidden from all but a handful of people. Injustice is not bound by race, country, or generation. Sin is an equalizer. We are all selfish, we are all prone to let our selfishness play…

If I could take on a superpower it would be not to need sleep. I like sleep, yet it doesn’t seem to fancy me, especially this past week as jet leg kicks our butts something fierce. Insomnia, no matter the reason, forces us to face the reality of our human weakness. Even when we desperately desire and need sleep, when we’ve tried all the tricks in the book minus hard narcotics, we lack the power to make ourselves fall asleep. (Blessed are those who are the exception.) What’s more, try as we might with coffee in hand, we can’t decide we don’t need sleep. Our reliance on sleep is one…