Scripture: Proverbs 3:27-28
Meditation: Have you ever had to live paycheck to paycheck? Or have you wondered how you were going to pay your bills when you were waiting on a check to come in? If you’ve ever experienced anxiety over finances, then you know what the writer of Proverbs is talking about here.
In this scenario, one person is paying and the other is receiving. Now imagine that the one receiving is under financial strain and the other is comfortable, even well-off. He is not anxious about money because he has plenty (it is “in his power to act”). He is casual or even callous. His withholding is where basic accounting turns to injustice.
In his 1963 Letter from a Birmingham Jail, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. writes, “I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.”
Justice delayed becomes injustice.
While black Americans spoke out against oppression and injustice in the 1950s and ‘60s, most white Americans casually, “paternalistically,” took their time. They said, as in the Proverb, “Come back tomorrow. I’ll think about it.” All the while, their brothers and sisters were being denied the full rights of American citizens.
Can you think of an example when time impacted your opportunity to act justly? What was the cause of delay? Offer it up to the Lord, and He is swift to forgive.
Pray: Father, thank you for the wisdom of Proverbs and the truths You declare in your Word. Help me heed these words and have empathy for others and to see where I have power to act.
