We do community development work in Burundi among the Batwa people. We run a community bank for those working at the very bottom, trying to get into the economy. We lead theological conversations among innovative African leaders. We’ve adopted two children, once orphaned due to AIDS and extreme poverty. So much of our life’s work bends toward practical justice.
So you could imagine stories about doing justice through agriculture, human rights advocacy, economic engagement, reconciliation or adoption. And trust me, these are stories I love to tell. But when I consider how I mete out Micah’s call to ‘do justice’ everyday, my thoughts come much closer to home. My stories come from the two bedrooms down the hall, from the dinner table, from the kitchen counter where we make guacamole together and scoop it up with tortilla chips or black bean-chorizo quesadillas.
Each day I’m given the opportunity to live out justice in my own home with my children. I’m not talking about making everything fair between two same-age siblings or handing out just discipline for wrong choices they’ve made. I see the practice of ‘doing justice’ as something much larger – it’s about offering my children a worldview shaped by God’s thoughts and hopes for justice. How can they love justice, hunger and thirst for it, let alone do justice if I don’t teach them what God’s vision of sweeping shalom looks like? So I daily endeavor to train them in the (just) way they should go so that they will never depart from it.
Read the rest over here, as I contribute to the ‘Doing Justice’ series hosted by Ed Cyzewski.
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