To a God Who Defines Justice
Be compassionate just as your God is compassionate.
— Luke 6:36 alt.
God of Justice,
Your justice feels nothing like ours.
The best we can do is meet some outer measure
while your only measure is you yourself.
Not merely restoring a balance
but tipping everything toward love and communion.
Your justice feels like grace,
like generosity, like love itself.
Your justice is, in fact, mercy and restoration.
It is compassion, filling in all the gaps that we leave
behind.
Your justice is an almighty and effective love
That leaves no one behind or forgotten,
Not even the so-called unworthy.
We are all worthy simply because you love us.
You restore all things to their original creation
In your heart (Eph. 1:11).
Your justice feels nothing like grudging demand,
obligation, requirement, command,
or prerequisite for love.
It feels like largesse to anyone who knows it.
It forces magnanimity from our stingy souls.
You do not love us because we are just;
You love us so that we can be just
in the same way that you are.
The justified one finally does justice,
just by living and breathing in an utterly new way:
full measure, pressed down, shaken together,
and running over into the world's lap
(Luke 6:38).
Your perfect justice (supposedly scary)
has never been evident in your dealings with me.
You are not fair to me at all!
When I fail, you only justify me, validate me,
legitimate my soul
at ever deeper levels,
so I can do the same with others.
No, it does not feel like justice at all.
I guess we understand justice as retribution,
whereas you seek true restoration and re-creation of
all things
so that all perfection will be found in you,
and through you all things be reconciled in heaven
and on earth (Col. 1:19-20).
Yet you even allow us to share in your
perfection.
God of justice,
we are not justified, nor have we done justice,
nor do we enjoy divine justice,
until we share in your own divine generosity.
We offer this prayer because you have first prayed
it in us,
for us, and with us.
We are only seconding the motion that you made
first.
Amen.
