It is passages like this one from the prophet Micah that reveal how much Jesus was a Jew, knew the Hebrew Scriptures, and was deeply formed by them. If we do not fully appreciate this fact, then we try to know the human text (Jesus) outside of the clear and total context (post-exilic Judaism). Then the message is neither clear nor compelling. How

Isaiah makes a very upfront demand for social justice, non-aggression, taking our feet off the necks of the oppressed, sharing our bread with the hungry, clothing the naked, letting go of our sense of entitlement, malicious speech, and sheltering the homeless. He says very clearly this is the real fast God wants!

Did you know that you only ask for what you have already begun to experience? Otherwise it would never occur to you to ask for it. Further, God seems to plant within us the desire to pray for what God already wants to give us, and even better, God has already begun to give it to us! We are always just seconding the motion, but the first motion is

am I

God loves them both. Saint Teresa of Avila summed it up when she said, “We find God in ourselves, and we find ourselves in God.”

So today you must pray for the desire to desire! Even if you do not feel it yet, ask for new and even unknown desires. For you will eventually get what you really desire!

Isaiah says explicitly that God prefers another kind of fasting which changes our actual lifestyle and not just punishes our body.

It is not that we pray and God answers. It is that our praying is already God answering within us and through us.

We are merely and forever inside of the divine flow, just like Isaiah’s “rain and snow.” Forgiveness is not some churchy technique or formula. Forgiveness is constant from God’s side, which should become a calm, joyous certainty on our side. Mercy received will be mercy passed on, and “will not return to me empty, until it has succeeded in what it