Do justice, love mercy, walk humbly

At a meeting to discuss how to provide sanctuary for Muslims and refugees in Portland, Pastor Elbert D. Mondainé Jr. embraced a local Muslim-American who spoke passionately of the danger to him and his family of the tidal wave of hatred sweeping the USA. 

I have been reading a powerful book by the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, The Third Reconstruction (2016).  Two paragraphs from that book that seem relevant to this meeting are the following:

Moral dissent is still necessary even when there is no reasonable expectation of political success. When we stand for right, even if we feel that we are standing by ourselves, we don’t only stand with Moses and Pharoah, we also stand with William Lloyd Garrison, the nineteenth-century abolitionist who denounced slavery when its abolition was a political impossibility.

Do justice echoed in every ripple of the great river of resistance. Treat people right, treat communities right, treat the least of these right. Love mercy. Love helping people. Love building a government that cares for all. Love the least, the left out, the lost. And this: Walk humbly.... Reclaim moral language in the public square for the common good.