When Mercy and Truth Meet Together - September 24

Today’s Readings: AM Psalm [83] or 146, 147; PM Psalm 85, 86; Esther 7:1-10; Acts 19:11-20; Luke 4:14-30

Today’s Reflection   

Over the past month or two, I have been gradually reading Jon Meacham’s latest book, His Truth is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope. Lewis’ death this summer made me curious to know more of his life, especially the stories of how he, as a very young man, exhibited such courage as he stood up for what he believed was right.

Reading Psalms 85 and 86 appointed for this noonday, brings to mind for me Lewis and the people he worked side by side with, who shared a commitment to using nonviolent means to achieve civil rights for all. As had activists before them, like Rosa Parks, they and other budding civil rights activists traveled to the Highlander Folk School—located on a small farm near Monteagle, Tennessee—to learn more of the nonviolent path from people like Septima Clark, the school’s director of workshops.  

At Highlander, they didn’t just learn about nonviolent activism, but they also experienced a vision of what an integrated society could be like: “Blacks and whites ate together, swam together, square-danced together. The setting was simple and idyllic, with white frame buildings set in a clearing bordered by woods.” As Parks recalled, “At Highlander, I found out for the first time in my adult life that this could be a unified society, that there was such a thing as people of different races and backgrounds meeting together in workshops, and living together in peace and harmony…. It was a place I was reluctant to leave. I gained there the strength to persevere in my work for freedom” (Meacham 65).

Lewis and his coworkers for civil rights found at Highlander a place where they could listen to God and one another, where they could experience a foretaste of what peaceful coexistence could be like. It was a place where, with the psalmist, they could “listen to what the Lord God is saying, for he is speaking peace to his faithful people and to those who turn their hearts to him” (Ps. 85:8). At Highlander, they could see a clear picture of what it looks like when, “Mercy and truth have met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other. Truth shall spring up from the earth, and righteousness shall look down from heaven” (Ps. 85:10-11). Their experiences there gave them a strong core of conviction, and a picture of what they were working toward, when they returned to facing the harsh realities of violent resistance to their nonviolent protests.

When Lewis and his fellow activists-in-training returned home to Nashville, their mentor James Lawson helped turn the Gandhian nonviolent principles they had soaked in at Highlander into practical techniques for nonviolent protest. Lewis remembers how Lawson, “showed us how to curl our bodies so that our internal organs would escape direct blows. … It was not enough, he would say, simply to endure a beating, It was not enough to resist the urge to strike back at an assailant. ‘That urge can’t be there,’ he would tell us. ‘You have to do more that just not hit back. You have to have no desire to hit back. You have to love that person who is hitting you’” (Meacham 66).

As he faced angry mobs, blows to the head, and multiple arrests, John Lewis held onto the kind of faith we hear expressed in Psalm 86 today: “Teach me your way, O Lord, and I will walk in your truth; knit my heart to you that I may fear your Name. … The arrogant rise up against me, O God, and a band of violent men seeks my life; they have not set you before their eyes. But you, O Lord, are gracious and full of compassion, slow to anger, and full of kindness and truth. … Show me a sign of your favor, so that those who hate me may see it and be ashamed; because you, O Lord, have helped me and comforted me.”

—Becky+

Questions for Self-Reflection

As you look around at all that is happening in our world today, can you imagine a way to bring mercy and truth, righteousness and peace together in the way that you respond to these difficult realities? What might it look like for mercy and truth to meet together, for righteousness and peace to kiss one another, in your own circles of influence?

Daily Challenge

Commit to reading more of someone like John Lewis, Diane Nash, James Lawson, or Septima Clark today, so that you can learn more of what it looks like to embody the spirit of Psalms 85 and 86, even in the most intense conflicts and conditions.