Posted by I like to know as much as possible. I like having all of the facts and I absolutely despise being in the dark about anything. And yet, despite my very particular preferences, our lives are full of moments where we don’t get to have all of the facts. We aren’t granted the luxury of knowing all things and, even if we had access to all of this information, I don’t think we could handle it all very well. But that doesn’t stop me from wanting to know.
I will often spend time wrestling with contradictions and inconsistencies even if I know these things will never come to a resolution.
I struggle with contradictions. I don’t like it when things don’t line up or aren’t congruous. I like order and consistency and balance and I don’t do well when people or things are contradictory. When I run into such a person or situation, I go through a series of mental gymnastics to try and right the apparent contradiction in my mind.
Today, as I was reading my Bible, I stumbled upon a seeming contradiction in the book of Micah:
“He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.”Rarely do justice and mercy go together in my mind, except for when describing God. He is both just and merciful, a combination we fall short of daily. I don’t know about you, but when I think of justice I don’t think of mercy and when I think of mercy I don’t think of justice having been served.
What does acting justly look like to you?
Do you love mercy?
How do you walk humbly daily?
While I both love and struggle to reconcile this particular verse, I’m incredibly grateful that we have a perfect example of how to walk out Micah 6:8 in Jesus. He was perfectly just, perfectly merciful, and every action was full of humility and grace. He was perfectly connected to God and lovingly interacted with a fallen world, many of whom weren’t big fans of his. And we can do the same.
Let’s learn from Jesus and then go out and walk like him today.
Do you struggle with contradictions?
How do you think justice and mercy go together?
To go Deeper: Read Identifying Out of Whack Priorities
Work in Progress 
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