God Specializes Where is the god who can compare with you—wiping the slate clean of guilt, turning away from the past sins of your purged and precious people? You don’t nurse your anger and don’t stay angry long, for mercy is your specialty. That’s what you love most. And compassion is on its way to us. You’ll stamp out our wrongdoing. You’ll sink our sins to the bottom of the ocean. You’ll stay true to your word. —Micah 7:18–20 (MSG, adapted) VICKI KEMPER | The prophet Micah names mercy as God’s specialty. Other Hebrew prophets highlighted God’s steadfast love and faithfulness. Moses might have said God specialized in deliverance; Isaiah called out God’s knack for newness-making. And Jesus emphasized the inclusiveness and extravagance of God’s love. In the Gloria Griffin gospel song, which I learned from R&B artist Lizz Wright, “God specializes in things thought impossible, and [God] will do what no other power can do.” I wonder if specialty, like beauty, is not in the eye of the beholder. I wonder if God doesn’t specialize in whatever we need most at any given moment. I appreciate Micah’s correlation of specializing with love. God’s specialty is mercy, he says, because that’s what God loves most. In this season of emptying ourselves of all that is not of God, how might you fill yourself up with love? What would it mean to love so deeply that you specialize in it? PRAYER God, I love your mercy, your extravagance, your deliverance, your healing power and all-inclusive love. Please don’t make me choose just one. May I trust you to bless me with whatever I most need in the moment.

About the Writer:
VICKI KEMPER is Pastor of First Church Amherst (UCC) in Amherst, Massachusetts.

Source: “Running from Empty” | 2023 Lent Devotional by the Stillspeaking Writers’ Group, made up of United Church of Christ ministers and writers who collaborate on resources for people in the church, outside the church, and not sure about the church.