“What does the Lord require of you but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8).
There are times in life when we realise just how little control, power or influence we actually have. This can be a salutary and humbling realisation. Wicked people inflict hurt and pain on others for reasons that we can barely fathom. Millions starve to death across the world and we wonder how or earth our little offering of a fiver here and there might help.
“Exclusivist inclusivists,” as they are referred to within the Church of England verbally attack those who do not share their views and make their lives a misery and we feel helpless to intervene in any meaningful way. In Act V of Macbeth the morbid and somewhat depressing King concludes that “Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury.”
As Christians we have a duty to realise the part that God would have us play on this stage of Tottington. It may at first appear that we have only been given a ‘bit role’ of no remarkable significance. And yet this is not so. The Vicar of Tottington will never change the world and it would be idiocy on his part if he imagined that he could. The words of the prophet Micah though are very powerful if they are taken seriously and to heart. What God asks of his Church is that her life is hallmarked with the stamp of justice, mercy and humility and that begins with us in exactly the place where we are. Life indeed is full of sound and fury in which there is so much need for that still small voice of calm.
The Vicar