SixEight Life

New Things: SixEight

He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. – Micah 6:8

Photo Credit: quinn.anya (creative commons)

When I first started this blog I had a simple purpose- to spread activism and social justice and to spend ‘everyday’ working towards the cause of freedom. Micah 6:8 was one of several verses that really spoke to me as I started on this journey. I’m having a hard time articulating exactly what my expectations were for this blog, but the goal was activism- pure and simple. I wanted to educate the masses on injustice and social causes I thought were important. I wanted to change the world, one word at a time.

But things evolve and things change. Pretty soon after I began writing I realized that stories resonate with people. We all love a good story. I was also shocked that the posts that got the most ‘hits’ were the posts where I deviated from my ‘focus’ and got raw and honest with the world. When I shared my stories, my struggles, my doubts and my goals it seemed to resonate with my friends and family. All of the blogging experts out there said that I should stick with my blog’s goal (in my case social justice) and any other posts would just be confusing. But after I started writing about my struggles, victories, goals in addition to my passion for justice, I felt like my blog became more complete. It was a complete picture of me and my quest to live a life for others and for Jesus. But what did that mean for the blog? “The Everyday Activist” didn’t really seem to fit as well with how the site evolved.

I revisited Micah 6:8 and I started thinking about the last few words in that little verse: “walk humbly with your God.” What does it mean to walk humbly? What does it truly mean to act justly and love mercy? I focused on the justice part, and some of the mercy while not really diving into the journey. Those three words: justice, mercy, and journey (from walking humbly) really seem to encompass a full life lived for God and for others. It’s simple and straightforward, which is something today’s complicated world is lacking. It’s certainly not easy, but it’s what I’m striving for.

So as of today my blog is officially renamed from “The Everyday Activist” to “SixEight Life” . Nothing will change content wise and posts will be centered on the three topics from Micah 6:8.

Justice – My heart is to proclaim freedom by spreading awareness about major social issues like human trafficking, extreme poverty and inequality.

Mercy – The church needs to continue to have difficult conversations about how we extend grace and mercy to ‘outsiders’. We can’t keep labeling certain sins as worse than others, and I want us to talk about the radical life of mercy Jesus lived and how the church should emulate that.

Journey – We’re all on this journey together to walk humbly with God. I want my journey to be for others, but I also want it to be full of adventure and radical acts of service.

The blog has been re-branded, and over the next month or so I’ll be continuing to work on creating a place where we can have conversations about this journey. Bear with me because I am terrible with web design (if you’re good at web design and want to help me I wouldn’t say no).

Thanks for reading friends, it means more than you’ll ever know.