Why Care About the Vulnerable?
Deut 24- I have been thinking about Miroslav Volf's description of his childhood in Croatia, and of God's justice. He remembers all his girl friends being raped, and all his boy friends being butchered and murdered, and his town being pillaged.
While it is difficult for most privileged Westerners to comprehend God's judgement of wickedness, it in many ways is God's commitment to the poor and vulnerable that brings about judgement. This morning's text brings that up again- v17 tells Israelites not to pervert justice of the orphan and widow.
In Isaiah 1, it says that God allowed Israel to lose the land and go into exile was because they didn't defend the cause of the fatherless or the widow. God's passion for those at the bottom rung in life connects to his zeal for right living from everyone- the oppressed love God's justice because it fives them relief and it keeps them from takin out revenge on their own the oppressor hates, or feels uncomfortable with God's justice and tries to minimize it for favor of other parts of God's love. In truth, it is all the love of God.
Take care of orphans and widows, leave some of your crops for the poor, don't take the outer cloak of the poor...because you remember what it was like living as slaves in Egypt...to ignore the plight of the alien, the orphan and the widow would compromise the very reason for the nation's being as a witness to God's generosity toward humankind.
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