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Scripture:
Then the word of the Lord Almighty came to me: “Ask all the people of the land and the priests, ‘When you fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh months for the past seventy years, was it really for me that you fasted? And when you were eating and drinking, were you not just feasting for yourselves? Are these not the words the Lord proclaimed through the earlier prophets when Jerusalem and its surrounding towns were at rest and prosperous, and the Negev and the western foothills were settled?’”
And the word of the Lord came again to Zechariah: “This is what the Lord Almighty said: ‘Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another. Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the foreigner or the poor. Do not plot evil against each other.’
Consider:
In my college ethics class, my professor really enjoyed setting dilemmas in front of us and then asking us to solve these impossible situations to teach us there often is no absolute “right answer”, just the one which fits mostly completely within our ethical framework. It’s fair to say everyone hated these exercises because they were REALLY HARD!
One such framework we were taught is the “front-page test”. In this scenario, you imagine the outcome of your one optional decision, all the way down to the details of what is most likely to happen. Then, after you’ve written that story, you ask yourself the question: “Would I be comfortable seeing this action described on the front page of the local newspaper tomorrow morning?”
It forces you to imagine the reaction of loved ones to your decision. If the thought of your family, neighbors, or boss reading about your choice makes you cringe, it fails the test. It uses public transparency as a proxy for moral rightness.
But what if other people’s opinions aren’t necessarily the best way to set up your ethical system? For Christians, there is a different question we must ask: “Would I be comfortable seeing this action described to God in the morning?”. This brings up a different litmus test by which we measure each decision using God’s ruler, which somehow seems to make finding a solution even harder because we think we don’t know what God would want us to do.
But we really do. And it turns out God’s litmus test is really simple, because the Bible tells us of a divine who is always on the side of the most vulnerable in any situation. The answer, then, to the question of “what should I do?” is always answered by another question - Am I standing with the people who have the least power in this situation?
That, friends, is a much easier question to answer, but a much harder one to live out.
Respond:
How have you seen yourself stand with someone who is vulnerable in the last week? Did you show them kindness, a listening ear, or offer a helping hand?
Pray:
Lord, free us from the belief that our worth is measured by what we accomplish. Teach us to stop believing that our importance and value are attached to how tired or overly busy we are. Help us create spaces where we can rest. May our rhythms reflect the freedom You have given us, and may our lives bear witness to Your kingdom of grace rather than the demands of endless production. Amen.
