New moon and sabbath, calling of assemblies, octaves with wickedness: these I cannot bear. Your new moons and festivals I detest; they weigh me down, I tire of the load. When you spread out your hands, I close my eyes to you; Though you pray the more, I will not listen. Your hands are full of blood! Wash yourselves clean! Put away your misdeeds from before my eyes; cease doing evil; learn to do good. Make justice your aim: redress the wronged, hear the orphan’s plea, defend the widow. (Is 1:13-17)
To think that God would get tired of us and all our religiosity perhaps is too much for most believers to handle. But the Scriptures are very clear. What God wants is not for us to be “religious” but rather to act with justice: to redress the wronged, hear the orphan’s plea, defend the widow. Perhaps it takes a football coach and his team to teach the church to “learn to do good.” As Nick Saban and the Alabama football team said so elegantly: “All lives can’t matter until black lives matter.”
