There’s a feeling most of us know well but rarely name. You read a headline, or you watch someone treated unfairly at work, or you see a neighbour struggling under the weight of somebody else’s bad choices. Something in your chest tightens. This isn’t right.
We often treat that feeling as a nuisance. We tell ourselves we’re too sensitive, or that we should toughen up and get on with the day. But I want to suggest something different. That ache is not a flaw in you. It’s a fingerprint.
You were made in the image of a God who loves justice, who defends the widow and the orphan, who lifts up the crushed. So when injustice troubles you, you are simply feeling a small echo of what God feels. It’s the Spirit stirring, longing for what God longs for: a world of justice, a world of mercy, a world of peace.
But here is the harder truth. Noticing isn’t enough.
That’s what Mordecai was pressing on Esther. He didn’t ask her to feel sad about the decree. He asked her to act - to go to the king, to beg for mercy, to risk everything for people who couldn’t speak for themselves. And Esther was afraid. Scripture doesn’t hide that. She knew exactly what it might cost her. She rose anyway.
We tend to think courage means the absence of fear. It doesn’t. It means moving while the fear is still there.
You may not have a throne room. But you have influence somewhere - in your family, your workplace, your street, your corps. Someone will listen to you. Someone is waiting for you.
So ask God today: what would you have me do? Then listen. Then act.
Because justice starts when we stop looking away.
Watch today’s five-minute devotional here: