New Year Devotional: Selah Compassion ConversationsNäide

What is Justice?

“Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow.”   

—Isaiah 1:17 

Selah   

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted us all, and it has not spared the children we serve with Compassion globally. It has also enabled us to think differently about the way that we serve one another.   

Doing justice is not just about living a good life without sin. We are asked throughout Scripture to not only do acts of justice, but to seek out ways to restore brokenness, in Christ. This passage in Isaiah draws us to a place of restoration. To advocate for those who are oppressed. To take up causes and plead the case of those who are forgotten.   

For families like 14-year-old Alvin’s in the Philippines, the pandemic hit hard. Businesses closed across the country, including the shop where his mother worked. He was desperate to help—but he didn’t know what to do. “I thought of looking for work or begging in the streets for money, but quarantine meant I couldn’t do either,” he says. 

The staff of his local Compassion centre bought a relief bag of food and other essentials. “I don’t need to beg because I know God will supply for my family through the church and my sponsor,” says Alvin. 

As we start a new year, let’s enact ways together to restore justice across the earth.

Reflection Question:

What does the word justice mean to you?  

Prayer:

Dear Jesus,  

2020 was a year full of much change, loss and transition. Help us to find ways to laugh, smile and celebrate you well as we move into 2021. May we find new songs and new ways to lean towards your hope. Thank you for the invitation to sit with compassion and justice

Amen