Ditch the Checklist

With what should I approach the Lord and bow down before God on high? Should I come before him with entirely burned offerings, with year-old calves? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with many torrents of oil? Should I give my oldest child for my crime; the fruit of my body for the sin of my spirit? He has told you, human one, what is good and what the Lord requires from you: to do justice, embrace faithful love, and walk humbly with your God.Micah 6:6-8 (CEB)I don't know if this is true of most people, but I know it is true of me: I have often wanted a checklist.Sure, I make my own checklists, but that's not what I'm talking about. I mean the kind someone hands you. How to do your taxes. Step one. Step two. Step three. How to choose a career. How to be a good husband. How to write a novel.The problem is the assumption that if you gather all the right pieces and assemble them correctly, you will automatically end up with something whole. Do all the little steps, or even all the big steps, and everything will turn out right.That's not how life works.Don’t get me wrong, checklists are useful. I use them all the time. But they are just a tool. Assembling all the ingredients of a cake does not guarantee you'll end up with a good cake, even if you stir everything together, even if you follow all the directions. Something separates an excellent baker from a merely adequate one, things like judgment, experience, and feel.Through the prophet Micah, God pointed out the shortcoming of Israel's checklist mentality. They had a list of good things to do—even impressive things—but they were missing what those things were supposed to accomplish. Maybe they wanted to earn their way to God. At the very least, they could look back over the previous week or month and check off their accomplishments.I suspect that's why most of us like checklists. We want to know when we've done enough.But God offered something different. Not a lower standard, but a higher one.How can you tell when you have completed justice? How do you know when you have fully embraced faithful love? Do you ever finish walking humbly with your God?Maybe that's the point. If we can check something off a list, we tend to think we're done with it. But our relationship with God is never a one-and-done experience. It is an ongoing journey, a continuing walk. The goal is not to arrive somewhere. The goal is to walk with God.Micah's listeners probably thought they had accomplished great things, and from a human perspective, perhaps they did. But God has always seemed less concerned with accomplishments than with relationships.That is a good reminder for me. I need to stop asking whether I've done enough. I never will. "Enough" is not the point.The relationship is.Let’s pray.Gracious God, thank you for inviting us into a relationship rather than a performance. Teach us to do justice, embrace faithful love, and walk humbly with you each day. When we become preoccupied with doing enough, remind us that your desire is to walk beside us. We pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.This devotional was written and read by Donn King.Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life.If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: [email protected] United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.