Caleb wasn't a fool for believing

The righteous care about justice for the poor, but the wicked have no such concern. (29:7)

When I read this Proverb, all at once I understood a lot of things. Ignorance about human oppression is a pattern of the world…something I should never feel comfortable in. I begged that I would stop looking to the right and left of me to determine the things I should care about. Except, of course, when the people around me are outstanding examples of love. Like Ashley, who cares so deeply about buying clothes that were made fairly that she’s gone to the cash register with a shirt, realized it was made in a sweatshop, and walked away without it. Do you know anyone else who even thinks about the rights of the factory worker? And Amie, who wanted so terribly to do something immediate about sex trafficking that she’s spending the next year abroad working for IJM. It’s absolutely selfless.

I think the world’s wisdom would have a lot of answers to these convictions. Answers meant to reason us (Christians, students, Americans) out of changing anything about our lives. But my friends take their cues from God’s wisdom. There’s no word I can type that expresses how I feel about that. Maybe it gives you the same feeling.

So, in a very compressed sentence: that proverb compelled me to apply for the LiNK internship (something I wrote off weeks earlier) and God took care of everything.

I pray we can all be obedient to God’s upward call of Christ. I’m not talking about social justice...I’m talking about anything our God is asking of you. Here’s a quote from a sermon by Francis Chan about the faith of Caleb (from the Exodus):

Some of you have heard specifically from the Lord. You know of things that you were created for. And just because no one else does it that way, you’ve backed off. Isn’t this book filled with people that were examples of ‘no one else did it that way’ and ‘everyone else was against’ them but they stood?

Caleb believed the Lord even when everyone else threatened to stone him, and God preserved his life because “he has a different spirit and has followed me fully”. Those are God’s words! If you’re interested in the story, its Numbers 13-14:38, with the grand-slam conclusion, 45 years later, Joshua 14:7-12.