What is it that the Lord requires of you?

The answer that the prophet Micah delivers from the mouth of God is,

here is what the Lord requires of you.

To do justice or righteousness, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.

And you think about it for a minute.

If we could follow that abbreviated condensation, the crystallization of the essence of a godly life, it boils down to those

three things, to do what is right, to love mercy, to walk humbly with God.

Well, the second part of that injunction, to love mercy is the word chasse.

Here's what God requires of you, Micah is saying, that you not only do what is right,

but that you manifest loving kindness, steadfast love, or what I'm calling here, loyal love.

I had a friend who was a seminary student of mine many years ago. He's now been in the

pastorate for several years. And he told me, he said, that they have an expression in their

family that they use quite frequently. He said, at our house, we stick with the stuck. I said, stick with the stuck. I never

heard an expression like, what's it mean to stick with the stuck? And he said, you know, we stick with

the stuck. I said, no, I don't know. What do you mean? We stick with the stuck. And he said,

that means that in our family, we stick together, no matter what.

You know, that's one of the beautiful things about the family unit, that where you're

involved in relationships that it's very hard to bail out of because you're kin, because

your family. You only have one mother in this world. You only have one father in your world, and it's a great tragedy when that relationship

is destroyed.

And how great it would be for our country, if everybody would adopt that motto in their

homes, we stick with the stuck.

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