Micah 6:8 - from April 2013
“How do you have such absolute faith in the ultimate triumph of good over evil?” I blurted out at the end of a discussion in Ted Grimsrud’s history and philosophy of non-violence class, fall of my junior year.
Ted, much to my surprise, responded to what I thought to be a rhetorical question with a lecture in our next class together on how he maintains faith in the transforming power of love, or something along those lines.
This anecdote from history and philosophy of nonviolence, a class I very much recommend by the way,is almost a perfect reflection on how my faith and my identity have grown and changed during my time at EMU. Almost at every turn my fixation with absolutes, my doubts and my questions, have been replaced with aprofound awe of the transforming power of love.
It seems somewhat cliché to admit, but the college verse, Micah 6:8, has had a significant impact in
shaping this transformation. “What does the Lord require of you? To do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.”
When I first came to EMU I was convicted by the first part of the verse: doing justice. My vocational and faith goals were all about doing what was just: I was going to be a principled lawyer, defeating injustices through the court of law and applying my Anabaptist convictions to nonviolence in my political defense of human rights.
However, an introduction to restorative justice, a semester spent learning to be in Chad, one of the most corrupt and poor nations in the world, and committing to community of presence here at EMU, especially one in which there exists much difference of opinion, introduced me to the concept of grace: of learning to love myself and others with mercy. I have been shocked to find transforming power in what I had assumed to be failure.
Awe, and with it a sense of humility, have begun to reform the absolute principled convictions I held as first-year. As a principled individual, I have struggled with humility. However, my spirituality has begun to be defined in terms of finding awe in that which is greater than myself, of paying enough attention to the transformations taking place all around me to watch my limited assumptions about reality fall apart. And in the transforming power of love, of which I try to remain in awe, I have found profound joy and hope for how to do justice and love mercifully in this world.
And thus, as I prepare to conclude my time at EMU and learn to grow in other communities, I pray that I might embody more the final argument from Micah 6:8: that I might walk humbly with God and maintain awe in love’s transforming power.
Ted, much to my surprise, responded to what I thought to be a rhetorical question with a lecture in our next class together on how he maintains faith in the transforming power of love, or something along those lines.
This anecdote from history and philosophy of nonviolence, a class I very much recommend by the way,is almost a perfect reflection on how my faith and my identity have grown and changed during my time at EMU. Almost at every turn my fixation with absolutes, my doubts and my questions, have been replaced with aprofound awe of the transforming power of love.
It seems somewhat cliché to admit, but the college verse, Micah 6:8, has had a significant impact in
shaping this transformation. “What does the Lord require of you? To do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.”
When I first came to EMU I was convicted by the first part of the verse: doing justice. My vocational and faith goals were all about doing what was just: I was going to be a principled lawyer, defeating injustices through the court of law and applying my Anabaptist convictions to nonviolence in my political defense of human rights.
However, an introduction to restorative justice, a semester spent learning to be in Chad, one of the most corrupt and poor nations in the world, and committing to community of presence here at EMU, especially one in which there exists much difference of opinion, introduced me to the concept of grace: of learning to love myself and others with mercy. I have been shocked to find transforming power in what I had assumed to be failure.
Awe, and with it a sense of humility, have begun to reform the absolute principled convictions I held as first-year. As a principled individual, I have struggled with humility. However, my spirituality has begun to be defined in terms of finding awe in that which is greater than myself, of paying enough attention to the transformations taking place all around me to watch my limited assumptions about reality fall apart. And in the transforming power of love, of which I try to remain in awe, I have found profound joy and hope for how to do justice and love mercifully in this world.
And thus, as I prepare to conclude my time at EMU and learn to grow in other communities, I pray that I might embody more the final argument from Micah 6:8: that I might walk humbly with God and maintain awe in love’s transforming power.
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