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(One of) My Life Verse(s)
By Jeremy | June 10, 2005
I've gotten reflective again this week. Perhaps it's from the Celebration or Monday's board meeting or orienting the interns to the ministry or the anticipation that the BG Crusade is nearing its end or all of the above. Who knows why exactly, but who really cares anyway?
All the reflecting reminded me of one of my life verses:
"Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. "Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy." (Proverbs 31: 8-9)
Although I quoted this passage below, it deserves special mention here.
I "discovered" the verse a month or so into my first year of law school, right around the time I first started questioning how much I really wanted to be there. The year prior, I had worked full-time as the youth director at Abounding Grace and eight months earlier we began the process of founding Generation Xcel. By June we opened the first Xcel center, and after running at full speed through the end of August I had to abruptly shift gears and remember that I was back in school. Not just any school, either, but at a law school where the professors masochistically assigned hundreds of pages of reading before the first day of classes. Why was I there?
On a humid, Indian summer night, God reminded me why through the book of Proverbs. I felt called to law school as preparation for ministry, not ministry in a traditional sense, but in a way that married God's heart for Justice with the real needs of urban communities. God was preparing me for advocacy on behalf of those who cannot advocate for themselves, where my skills and talents would serve the destitute and defend the defenseless.
Anyone else feel an affinity to this, or am I sounding more and more like Don Quixote?
Topics: community, compassion, justice, legacy, life, politics, poverty, sports, theology, urban | No Comments »
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