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Sometimes it helps to get a little dose of encouragement—along with a good cup of coffee!—to start the day. Today we discuss justice.

Hopefully the message below will help you get off to a good start for the week.  Please feel free to forward the newsletter on to others that you think would benefit from the content.

Justice

I am taking a chance of walking into a cultural mine field with this week’s word— “justice.” As is often the case, I started with the definition:

• The maintenance or administration of what is just especially by the impartial adjustment of conflicting claims or the assignment of merited rewards or punishments.

There is a lot going on here!

• Maintenance or administration
• Just
• Impartial adjustment
• Conflicting claims
• Assignment of rewards or punishment

As I started to dig into the topic of justice, I kept coming back to two familiar refrains in which the concept of justice is spoken. The first is the all so familiar words of the Pledge of Allegiance:

• I pledge allegiance to the Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

The second is Philippians 4:8:

• Finally brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.

I won’t profess to have a deep, explicit understanding of the word “just” or “justice.” However, what I will profess is that the above verse does a great job of capturing what I feel is the essence of the concept. It’s my position that we would all be better off if we focused on what is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, and praiseworthy.

And the corollary to that is that we all need to stand up for instances where the opposite occurs. Having a litmus test to refer back to in tough times is a good thing in my mind, and, as is very often the case, I found a pretty good litmus test in the Bible.

Living up to the Pledge requires that we face head on what we see as just, and, just as importantly, that we take action to call people to task when they are not in alignment.

That brings us to this week’s question:

• Are you pursuing justice for all?

Thanks for sharing a bit of your time with me this Monday morning.  

Have a great week!

Blog post from this past week:

Monday Morning Motivation - Reverence