Walking Humbly with God
Kay Patterson

Scripture:
“With what shall I come before the Lord and bow down before the exalted God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of olive oil? Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? 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.”  Micah 6: 6-8 (NIV)

Devotional:
I’m immensely relieved that God does not require me to make burnt offerings or to offer up my children or pets in order to enter into a relationship with Him. Micah announces that instead, we are required to act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God.  What do these lofty concepts look like in my daily life?  

In some ways, it might be easier to meet God’s requirements if they were more tangible: Give X amount of money and you are good to go; you know exactly what the transaction involves, it can be listed in a ledger for everyone to see, so that they all know exactly where you stand. Instead, the concepts of acting justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly with God are intensely personal and hard to quantify. I think that is the point – our individual relationships with God are not transactional or quantifiable, and only fully seen by God.     

I’m trying to get into a habit of asking myself how I serve God by acting justly and loving mercy. What am I doing on a daily basis to ensure that people are treated fairly in all aspects of life and always given equal opportunity to pursue the gifts God gave them? What steps can I take to support people in need and protect the vulnerable? Opportunities abound at Arcola Church, so I have no excuse if God finds me lacking in this respect.

Micah also implores us to walk humbly with God. What does that look like in our daily lives? To me, it looks like my grandmother’s life. She was such a shining example of walking humbly with God that when I picture her in my mind, I see her as a young girl in a yellow and white dress, walking along a dirt road, holding God’s hand and smiling up at Him. I can’t really picture God, I just know that’s whose hand she is holding. He was her constant companion in every aspect of her life, which is perhaps why she always had a childlike happiness and optimism.  

She would often preface her plans with “God willing,” with an attitude of expectation rather than hesitation. For example, when I was little, she used to take me with her to the library on Saturday afternoons. In the morning, she would remind me, “God willing, we’ll go to the library at 2pm.”  For her, it wasn’t a throwaway phrase. She truly humbled herself to His will and depended on Him to lead her. Years later, heading into heart surgery, she told me, “This time tomorrow I’ll be recovering, God willing.” She didn’t seem to be dreading the surgery, but rather looking forward to seeing what God had in store for her. And to me it seemed that God was always willing with so many blessings in her life.

Prayer:
“Dear God, thank you for inviting me to walk humbly with you through each day and night.  Please help me to look to your will for my life, not to my own plans and desires. Help me to do what you require of me, acting justly and supporting others with mercy and love.”