Serving pizza slices on the bus

Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow's cause. Isaiah 1:16-17

This is not about how to circumvent the cross.  Rather this is about actions that we are called to make, especially at a societal level.  This word of the LORD is addressed to the rulers of Sodom, to the people of Gomorrah.  And to His people laden with iniquity.  

Come now let us reason together, says the LORD.  If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land; but if you refuse and rebel, you shall be eaten by the sword.

This is a logical and certainly straightforward mathematical equation.  The law of justice, the path of goodness that has been built into the very elemental twisting strands of creation, just as real and practical as the laws of gravity and the principles of thermodynamics.  

So what to do?

Can I leap out of the crumpled ocean liner spiraling downward?  Or is it too late, and am I left rearranging deck chairs?  Is the highest call to join in the orchestra playing Nearer My God to Thee as the ship gives one last ugly jerk?

Andy Crouch has written a new book to answer this question, Tedium + Valor.  From this end of the story, the Christians who battled to rid the British empire of the slave trade are only noble and triumphant.  But the actual story is slow and difficult, requiring quantities of tedium and the sort of quiet sturdy valor that gets up every morning to stand in the gap.  Rather the gaping maw of rushing water that smacks one to their knees.  Every morning.  

And this morning as I stare at the bleak words of the prophet Isaiah, I realize that I this quiet valor takes place around me every day, I am living in a veritable cloud of witnesses of the sort Jesus called us to be as He ascended into heaven.  

Dustin peddling his bicycle across town to crawl about in the muck under bedraggled trailer homes.  Mom and Dad standing on a bleak trash-strewn street corner every Thursday afternoon, serving heaps of potatoes and bits of meat to an even bleaker line of hungry souls.  Andrea pushing back against the academic paradigm to rescue the fatherless from a world of reactionary bravado. The images flip pell mell past.  Mike Birrer and his countless phone calls.  Alan watering the school garden on Saturday afternoon.  Heather and an aerobic step class with someone stumbling back into the light.  Cathy packing an Easter basket for a young man who has been the source of quite a few painful sleepless nights.  Ann planning nutrition classes.  An unnamed handy man declaring God’s love as he rakes leaves.  

Let me join in this chorus of willing obedience.  To make that choice.  Of presence.  Of kindness. Of tedium.  And valor.