Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an overflowing stream. Amos 5:24
Justice is loud. It is not meant to be silent or hidden. I don’t mean that you have to scream out loud about injustice. I’m not speaking in literal terms, although sometimes it is literal. What I mean is that when we act out against injustice or speak up for someone else who is being oppressed then we are acting or speaking in a loud manner.
I want you to picture a waterfall. A huge, raging waterfall. Maybe 300 feet tall, waters pouring relentlessly into a pool of water which stirs it up like an endless storm. Does it pause? Does it ever slow down? When I read that verse from Amos I can’t help but think of this exact waterfall. He is saying we should let justice be like a waterfall that will eventually lead into an overflowing stream. Justice or truth when spoken out causes a ripple in the waves… sometimes it’s a little ripple, other times it looks more like a storm.
And when I picture this type of justice I cannot help but think of Martin Luther King, Jr. and his fight for equality. In 1963-64 from Birmingham, Alabama a shot was fired that was heard around the world and this was the turning point for the civil rights movement.
Unfortunately, an advocate of nonviolence, Martin Luther King Jr.’s speeches often turned into violent riots. But his relentless fight for what he stood for, equality, made quite the wave in America’s social status quo and changed our country forever. The first couple years of this movement were tumultuous, violent and hard. Two forces coming up against each other and causing one of the greatest storms in American history. As time went on and the fight persisted something had to give. Laws changed and people in the south began to merge as their hearts slowly began to change and they no longer saw African Americans as black but as another human being. 50 years later we are still living out that storm and our waterfall is turning into an overflowing stream.
Can you imagine what this country would look like if Martin Luther King Jr. or any other civil rights activist did not fight? If they just gave up after the first sign of trouble? These people saw an injustice, lived in injustice and decided to speak out against it knowing it was going to be a long, hard ride. They fought to bring the Kingdom here on earth.
Our struggle in this world is not “against flesh and blood but it is against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers in this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the spiritual realms.” (Ephesians 6:12)
I believe that each time we speak out against an injustice whether it is a spoken lie, someone being bullied, abortion, oppression, human trafficking, poverty, etc, something powerful happens in the spiritual realms. When we stand up for our God and His Kingdom we are making a statement even louder than a waterfall. It may cause some strife, but keep standing up for what you believe in out of love. If we want to speak out against big injustices we need to start first with the little one. If we all did, I think things in this country, in this world, would start to look different.
Youth Department