"Hate evil, love good; maintain justice in the courts. Perhaps the LORD God Almighty will have mercy..." - Amos 5:15
My wife, Amanda, and I were originally planning to visit my daughter, Cassidy, at her college in Columbus, MS today, but because of a church member's funeral today, we're not able to go. The thought of road-tripping to Cassidy reminded me of road-tripping with Cassidy and the following devotion from a couple years ago about that road trip.
We were surprised that the huge parking lot was empty except for a few cars. Moreover, none of the people from the cars were around. So, when my youngest, Cassidy and Caden, and I parked our car in downtown Memphis this past Memorial Day, we weren't exactly sure if we should walk down the right side of the parking lot or the left.
We should've gone right.
As it was, we had gone to the left, working our way toward the National Civil Rights Museum, which came to mind as I read more from the prophet Amos in today's Daily Bible reading. Through Amos, God demands that we treat the Cushite the same as the Israelite (Amos 9:7). God demands that foreign people be treated with the same love and respect as our "home boys." Just as God sends his grace on all people, God calls us to love, respect, and do justice toward all people, regardless of race, nationality, creed, etc.
So, Cassidy, Caden, and I are walking toward the National Civil Rights Museum in downtown Memphis early on Memorial Day, May 28. As we walk past the parking lot and cross to the next block, we realize "we're not in Kansas anymore, Toto."
We've stepped into a poor, broken-glass riddled, mostly abandoned neighborhood. And the next thing we know, we hear "rah, rah, rah, rah, rah." At least that's what it sounded like to me as the Alice in Wonderland-sized Rottweiler barreled towards us with what was surely more than the supposed 130-pound max carried by these "Rottweil butchers' dogs" (German: Rottweiler Metzgerhund).
They were first called "Rottweil butchers' dogs" because they carried carts filled with the meat that the butcher had butchered after the dog had hunted it down for butchering.
My children and I started looking for the cart that would carry us away to the butcher after our new friend got done with us. Mr. Rottweiler was barking and barreling towards us from a "Samford and Son" looking property, but Fred Samford was nowhere to be found to call back his version of man's best friend.
So on comes the butcher dog, racing at the speed of light, until...
He crashes into the chain link fence about ten inches away from our delicious-looking thigh meat.
That's the first time I ever heard three people pray in unison, thanking God for the beauty of chain link fence.
And we immediately thanked God for his mercy.
In the very next instant, as if God himself used his finger to lift up our heads and turn them to the right, we saw the sign on the National Civil Rights Museum just one block to the right. We raced there faster than a Rottweil butchers' dog.
And as we passed the very place where the civil rights leader, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated on April 4, 1968, 6:01 PM central time (as the Lorraine Motel itself where Dr. King was killed has been transformed into the Museum), our little experience of mercy with the Rottweil butchers' dog made us keen to God's demand through Amos, "Hate evil, love good; maintain justice in the courts. Perhaps the LORD God Almighty will have mercy..." - Amos 5:15
Praise God!
Pastor Chris
"The gospel is the story of Jesus [what God's only Son has done for us that we can't do for ourselves], spoken as a promise." - Robert Jenson
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