{"id":4384,"date":"2026-02-01T19:02:29","date_gmt":"2026-02-01T19:02:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/2026\/02\/01\/to-do-to-love-to-walk-based-on-the-united\/"},"modified":"2026-03-17T14:09:55","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T18:09:55","slug":"to-do-to-love-to-walk-based-on-the-united","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/2026\/02\/01\/to-do-to-love-to-walk-based-on-the-united\/","title":{"rendered":"To Do, To Love"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cTo Do, To Love, To Walk\u201d based on The United Methodist Social Principle on Civil Disobedience<\/a> Micah 6:1-8<\/h1>\n

For many of us, the requirements of Micah 6:8 are profoundly familiar. What God requires of us is that we to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with our God. Justice, kindness, walking with God. To do, to love, to walk.<\/p>\n

Micah is one of the prophets, and the prophets are the ones who call out injustice. That is, that most often they speak to the fact that God wants society to take care of everyone, and make sure the hungry have food and the unhoused are housed and the widows and orphans can access life giving resources. Debts should be forgiven, judges should be impartial, there should be no systems of oppression nor domination.<\/p>\n

To do justice includes calling out injustice, and acting justly. Paying agreed upon amounts, finding ways to re-balance imbalance, sharing, taking responsibilities seriously. God\u2019s dreams can\u2019t be fulfilled unless individuals and societies DO justice.<\/p>\n

I am so grateful that the second one is kindness and not niceness! We are to love kindness. Isn\u2019t that a delight? Not just do kindness but also love it, notice it and be excited by it and celebrate it and embrace it. LOVE kindness. Love how it feels to be kind, love how it feels to receive kindness, love how it feels even to see kindness.<\/p>\n

And, finally, \u201cwalk humbly with God.\u201d Sometimes I hear this one and the energy is on the \u201chumbly\u201d but I think it should be on the \u201cwith God.\u201d Remember we are not alone. Remember that God is with us, and God is powerful, and God is loving, and God is at work doing good in the world, and that we GET TO work with this God of love and also just savor God\u2019s love in our lives.<\/p>\n

This week I came across a piece entitled \u201cHow to Take Care of Your Mental Health Under Fascism\u201d by Dr. Lauren Fogel Mersy who I know NOTHING about other than she works in Minneapolis as a licensed therapist, but I appreciated her point that we are supposed to oscillate \u201cbetween coping skills that confront what is happening and coping skills that take breaks for respite.\u201d Every one I know is DOING this, but I \u2013 for one \u2013 did not have clarity on it is as a model for health. We do the things, whether it is ingesting the news or reading history, calling our representatives, showing up for protests, posting our views, making donations, checking on people\u2026 we do the things. Some of the are HARD, they take a lot. (And, for me, I mostly mean ingesting the news is hard.) But then we do the other things\u2026 we craft or create, we get together with friends, we play and eat, we do yoga or mediation or puzzles, or watch or read something escapist, or sing, or get exercise or simply pray.<\/p>\n

And we go back and forth.<\/p>\n

We confront what is happening and we feed our souls. That is, we do the important things, and we do the other important things. And within this we do all the things: we do justice and we love kindness AND we walk humbly with God and it is all in there.<\/p>\n

The work of coping skills that confront includes so many of the things we\u2019ve been doing. For me, it helps to connect this with the work of doing justice. And, as we know, sometimes the justice loving requires Civil Disobedience. Jesus did it, and sometimes his followers need to as well, because God\u2019s commandment to love our neighbors take precedence over obedience to immoral authorities. And thanks be to God that our denomination names this important truth.<\/p>\n

There are astounding stories these days of the many ways that doing justice is happening. Have you heard the stories of people in Minnesota protecting their neighbors by standing watch over schools and then the stories they tell of other people bringing them coffee, or handing them 3-d printed whistles, or just showing up to keep them company for a bit? People who are doing front line work are doing their work supported by others doing different work and together whole communities are holding strong in the face of unrelenting pressure from the domination system.<\/p>\n

The people who do the best organizing are the ones who know the power of art and music and culture to strengthen community and commitment. Singing together matters, beauty matters, COFFEE matters. (Huh, it is almost like churches do know a thing or two about bringing people together!)<\/p>\n

The work of coping skills that offer respite connects really well to loving kindness as far as I can tell. Loving kindness for others AND for ourselves. The inspiring stories, noticing the wonder, and of course the imperative escapism of zoning out.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been loving kindness by noticing good things. When the news troubles our souls, it can be far too easy to focus on the horrible and horrifying things around us. But when we are looking for them, we are able to see that there is an abundance of good too.<\/p>\n

This week I\u2019ve been noticing snow removal. This is might sound trivial, but let me explain. I now walk a 5 year old to and from school every day and it makes me very attentive to conditions of the sidewalks. In my neighborhood most people put forth a decent effort and that\u2019s great, but usually a few houses along our route\u2026 well.. don\u2019t and it turns out that the ease of the route is really impacted by whether or not EVERYONE has cleared the sidewalks.<\/p>\n

This week is the first big snowstorm since we started walking and the sidewalks were in much better condition than usual. This surprised me, and I paid even better attention and found signs that neighbors were taking care of each other. Snowblower tracks flowed continually from one property to another. Rock salt color also crossed property lines. And, my personal favorite right now is the house on the corner across from the elementary school where a 5 foot high pile of plowed snow creates a barrier from exiting the sidewalk\u2026 and the people from that house broke through the mess on one side (outstanding work that) and then used their snowblower on their LAWN to create a path around the insanity snow pile to let kids get to school safely. (Please note my child climbs over this pile, but I appreciate the path nonetheless.) Collaboration, creativity, and care are visible on our city sidewalks!<\/p>\n

The third piece of what is required of us is to walk humbly with God. That one doesn\u2019t show up in the therapists model, probably because she wasn\u2019t aiming her words at a spiritual community. For me though, the capacity to do justice and the attention to love kindness come out of my walking with God. God holds me and upholds me, makes space for my anger and fears and joys and delights, offers me patience and hope when I run out, and more than anything just is WITH me reminding me that I\u2019m not alone and we\u2019re not alone in the work we do. We\u2019re not alone in doing justice, God is with us sanctifying and strengthening the justice we do. We\u2019re not alone in loving kindness, God is with us sanctifying and strengthening the kindness we love.<\/p>\n

God wants full and abundant lives for all people. That\u2019s why we work for justice AND why we love kindness. And that\u2019s why we stay connected to God in prayer and worship, ministry and study, in savoring quiet moments and the wonder of music and art.<\/p>\n

We are asked to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with God. That is, we are called to confrontation and respite. So, in case I haven\u2019t been clear enough yet, truly dear ones, oscillating between confrontation and respite is IMPORTANT, do both and don\u2019t judge your needs for balance. I\u2019m pretty confident God doesn\u2019t judge us for needing respite. Thanks be to God. Amen<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

Rev. Sara E. Baron\u00a0<\/p>\n

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady<\/p>\n

\u00a0603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305<\/p>\n

\u00a0Pronouns: she\/her\/hers<\/p>\n

\u00a0http:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/<\/a>
https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/FUMCSchenectady<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

February 1, 2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cTo Do, To Love, To Walk\u201d based on The United Methodist Social Principle on Civil Disobedience Micah 6:1-8 For many … Continue reading To Do, To Love<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[34,38,28,39,33,1290,1291,1265,140,1292,56,1269,1293],"class_list":["post-4384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons","tag-fumc-schenectady","tag-progressive-christianity","tag-rev-sara-e-baron","tag-thinking-church","tag-umc","tag-civil-disobedience","tag-do-justice","tag-first-umc-schenectady","tag-kindom","tag-love-kindness","tag-schenectady","tag-social-principles","tag-walk-humbly-with-god"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4384"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4384\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4609,"href":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4384\/revisions\/4609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}