What if we allowed the Spirit of the Lord to help teach us to treat everyone we run into with a shower of love, dignity, honor and royalty? What if we treated them like kings and queens, princes and princesses (like we’d like to be treated) – especially the most unlovely, forlorn, mean, irritating, irrational, incoherent and oppressed? What if we perhaps even treated them to a gift, a good meal or warm shelter? What if our ability to “arise and shine” (Isaiah 60) is interconnected to how we treat the poor and needy (Isaiah 58)?

“Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard. Then you will call, and the Lord will answer; you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.

“If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday.” ~Isaiah 58:6-10 (NIV)