Sharon O’Neill is a pastor at Tailrace Community Church in Launceston, a coach and justice advocate, and is a member of the Micah Women Leaders Network.
Artwork by Wes Franklin.
For the past 30 years I have risen early to spend time with Jesus, reading his word, quietly communing. Every morning, I have asked Jesus to help me become love – not to do love, but to become love – so that in any situation I find myself in I can respond with love. It is this from deep, intimate communion with God that hearts find themselves in the space of justice.
Justice doesn’t come knocking on doors because of zeal or passion; both make for a bad saviour, burning our soul out like a candle burning wick. Justice comes knocking on the doors of our hearts because of love. A person needing attachment. A story needing a witness. Struggle and heartache needing an ally. Hearts needing permission and space for lament. Worn-out souls needing hope. The Word of God, Jesus, wanting to form words around the unseen and voiceless.
No story requiring justice arrives on its own. It always takes failed systems and communities for such a story to arrive. For stories to change it makes sense that Jesus will also want his children to form allyship.
Sometimes we resist the call of justice thinking we are veering off, seeing it as an added extra, a forsaking of the gospel message. But justice is the Gospel wrapped up in human form. It comes when we allow our heart to be renovated in such a way that we see the Imago Dei in the faces, stories and lives of people Jesus brings to us. In that space, justice is no longer ‘just’ justice: it is a way of being love to one another.
Heart of my own heart,
Be my sight
Be my song
Be my light.
Soften my heart that it would break for your world,
Lead my hands and feet to do work that is poured out for the sake of your children,
Make me brave, make me hope, make me trust, make me love.
In Jesus’ sweet, sweet name, amen.
– Mihee Kim-Kort, in A Rhythm of Prayer
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