How Amos 5:24 Reminds Us Of The Spiritual Call Of Justice
Do you ever look at things happening around us and wonder about justice? Can it exist in a society that seems to be set against our people? What is God’s will for our justice? How can we create justice in spaces that seem so unjust and filled with hatred?
Amos 5:24 reminds us that our call to justice is holy work for us all, “But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!" But how can that be when injustice is all around us?
It was April 1963. Martin Luther King Jr sat in a narrow Birmingham jail cell thinking strange thoughts and praying long prayers. Then he wrote a moving letter that came straight from the spirit.
After being imprisoned for participating in a non-violent demonstration, the anti-Black authorities questioned King's reason for being in Birmingham. He wrote in response that injustice had brought him there, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village to spread the gospel, King felt compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond his hometown of Atlanta.
We must move toward justice and take direct action for our people because, as King put it, injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. When people tried to condemn the demonstrations in Birmingham, King reminded them that the system needed to be dismantled instead.
In this prophetic letter, King reminds readers never to feel compelled to wait for justice because "freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor," and time is a myth.
He urges us to consider that progress has never come from inevitability; instead, it comes from the tireless and persistent work of people willing to co-create new realities with God.
Like King, we must realize our people are "caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny." Together with God, we can answer the call to demand justice for us all.
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