But let justice roll down like waters,
    and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. (Amos 5:24)

Two thoughts are on my mind this morning. At first I believed they were unrelated, but it turns out they’re not.

First, the most recent in the series of powerful prayers by the Chaplain of the Senate, Barry Black. His words caught my attention. Wednesday, in characteristic eloquence, Black asked God to, “Cover our shame with the robe of your righteousness. Forgive us, reform us and make us whole.”

“Cover our shame with the robe of your righteousness. Forgive us, reform us and make us whole.”

Spot on as those words were/are, it’s my personal feeling that they fell on deaf ears. Why? Because shame requires the presence of a little thing known as “humility.” Lawmakers can’t – won’t – feel shame in the face of such abject and widespread self-righteousness. Humility remains strikingly absent on both sides of the aisle.

CONVERSION: The second concept on my mind (yes, I woke up this morning with huge social, philosophical, and spiritual concepts rattling around inside my head!) is that of “conversion.”

In Rebekah’s Wednesday evening study of the Book of Acts we’re looking at how people are changed in response to encounters with Jesus. What’s interesting – and I’d never thought of it this way before – is that in many of the stories the conversion experience isn’t limited to the people who are meeting Jesus for the first time (The Ethiopian Eunuch was converted, yes, but so was Philip; the Samaritans were converted, we can read about that, but so were the believers who came up from Jerusalem; Cornelius was converted, the story goes, but evidently so was Peter…).

In other words, if we follow Jesus, and if we are open to the Spirit, then we are constantly engaged in a process of change, reformation, transformation, and conversion.

Peter, for example, was more than a rock, he was a rigid fundamentalist. But God changed him, time and again, by taking him into Samaria (Acts 8), by introducing him to Cornelius – “What God has made clean, you must not call profane” – (Acts 10), and at the pivotal Council in Jerusalem (Acts 15).

HOPE: The story of Acts makes me realize that we all need to be involved in constant conversion. Every day is a new opportunity to be transformed, to undergo heart and soul changes, in response to our faith.

Lawmakers in Washington appear to have their minds made up before they even get out of bed in the morning. The faith most members of Congress profess stays alive via regular transformational encounters with the Living God; but they have allowed partisan politics to inoculate them against conversion.

SENATE CHAPLAIN: The good Chaplain of the Senate can pray all he likes about shame and righteousness; but I’m going to pray for conversion; I’m going to pray for repentance; I’m going to pray that these people allow Jesus just a little bit of a toehold in their politics.

Amen – DEREK