Personal Thoughts:

I consistently come back to the Isaiah chapter 1. I'll spend a few months without thinking about it, but eventually my thoughts wander back to its words. They trouble me, they cause me to deeply think about who I am, what I think, and what I communicate about God. Needless to say, this part of the Bible challenges me greatly.

Pretty much the passage says:

1. Your worship of me is worthless. In fact, just stop it. Stop what you're doing cause it's meaningless, worthless, and disgusting to me. [Is 1v1-16a]
2. Learn to do right. Seek justice. Help the widow and the orphan. [Is 1v16b-17]

So basically, God is telling his people to stop doing what he has commanded them. They their sacrifies, prayers, and festivals are all meaning less. Whoa! Their whole religion is summed up in these actions. So pretty much, because they are failing to seek justice - to help the widow and orphan or to encourage the oppressed/rebuke the opppressor - their religion is meangingless. OUCH!

This is implying that the people of that day are not seeking justice, not helping the widow or the orphan, they're not encouraging the oppressed/rebuking the oppressor. God is angry! He is not happy with them at all. This causes me to ask the question --> am I seeking justice? or am I ok with the injustice that is happening all around me. Perhaps I'm ignorant of injustice...so is there injustice around me? If so: where is it? what is it? how am I a part of it?

For me, this also implies that to God, unless we're seeking justice, he sees our religion as worthless. It doesn't matter what I believe if I'm not helping the widow and orphan or to encouraging the oppressed/rebuke the oppressor. Which means I need to check that in my life.

I live in a world where I struggle with this daily. I'm aware of injustice around me - I read the tags on my shirt - and yet I struggle to do anything about it. [read: pragmatically I'm apathetic towards this issue] So what can I do about it.

What can I do to seek justice. What can I do to encourage the oppressed. Seriously, what do you think?