one way to consider justice...

I am still on vacation getting a lot of that space and play I recommended for myself last week in a post. I'm at my brother's in Salem, OR, now, after a week of traveling west to Oregon, enjoying several sites and a stop at my other brother's in Montana. During the road time, as my dad drives and my mom and our kids read and watch movies, I have been able to do some reading as well. I've been reading through Nehemiah in the NIV and Message, Ephesians in the NIV and Message, and spending some time with the Scriptures that have the word "justice." A couple of days ago, I read through the introduction of Ephesians in the Message, and to me, it is a great passage of what I consider when I think of the work of justice. Here it is:

"Paul's letter to the Ephesians joins together what has been torn apart in our sin-wrecked world. He begins with an exuberant exploration of what Christians believe about God, and then, like a surgeon skillfully setting a compound fracture, "sets" this belief in God into our behavior before God so that the bones-belief and behavior- knit together and heal.

Once our attention is called to it, we notice these fractures all over the place. There is hardly a bone in our bodies that has escaped injury, hardly a relationship in city or job, school or church, family or country, that isn't out of joint or limping in pain. There is much work to be done.

And so Paul goes to work. He ranges widely, from heaven to earth and back again, showing how Jesus, the Messiah, is eternally and tirelessly bringing everything and everyone back together. He also shows us that in addition to having this work done in and for us, we are participants in this most urgent work. Now that we know what is going on, that the energy of reconciliation is the dynamo at the heart of the universe, it is imperative that we join in vigorously and perseveringly, convinced that every detail in our lives contributes (or not) to what Paul describes as God's plan worked out by Christ, "a long-range plan in which everything would be brought together and summed up in him, everything in deepest heaven, everything on planet earth."

I don't know how you think when you hear the word, "justice", but this passage describes well what I think about when I consider the work of justice as right relationship.