Micah Challenge

The Old Testament prophet Micah reminds us that there are three things God requires of us: ‘to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with our God." (Micah 6:8)

Perhaps the Micah blueprint can be visualized by the following: 

Walk Humbly With God - addressing our spiritual lives: personal commitment to Christ, spiritual disciplines, worship, serving God, becoming a devoted follower of Jesus, sharing in and seeking to build up the Christian family and community.

Love Mercy - addressing individual symptoms of brokenness, lostness and need in our neighbour and others around us, locally and globally; through acts of kindness and service, by meeting basic needs such as food, clothing, shelter, medical assistance and care; by sharing of our abundance with those who have little - and especially who have few choices, if any, in life.

Act Justly - addressing the causes that create the symptoms; job creation andjob training, teaching how to read, helping people prepare for life; fighting for liveable wages and sustainable jobs; tutoring, mentoring; helping change issues of unemployment and under-employment

Many Christians think that the whole of their spiritual life and discipline happens only in the context of the first aspect. The need is for individual disciples - and for churches - to prepare and respond holistically to the challenges and opportunities of all three.

Dare

It is not the critic who counts: not the one who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the one who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming; but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievements; and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat. 

-- Theodore Roosevelt