Tuesday of the 2nd Week of Lent
Isa 1:10,16-20
Mt 23:1-12
“Cease to do evil. Learn to do good, search for justice, help the oppressed…”
These words are not theoretical to me. They are my job.
As a prosecutor, I have always believed my work is about upholding the rule of law and serving justice. Not punishment for its own sake — but drawing a line. Protecting dignity. Standing up for people who cannot stand up for themselves.
But some cases test your faith in humanity. I recently read about a stepfather who came home drunk and raped his 14-year-old stepdaughter — a girl with low IQ, deeply vulnerable. No one knew until she went to the hospital and was found to be pregnant. She carried the baby to term. The child is now fostered out to another family.
When you encounter facts like that, something inside you shifts. You do not just analyse the offence. You feel the weight of it in your chest. I questioned, “God, where were You in all this?”
Justice in court cannot undo trauma. It cannot give that girl back what was taken. At best, it tells her: what happened to you was wrong. You matter. We will not pretend this did not happen. Sometimes that is all the law can offer — a public acknowledgement that evil is real and will be named.
And yet God says, “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be white as snow.” That line unsettles me.
I live in a world of scarlet facts. Charge sheets, medical reports, statements etc. I am trained to prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt. But God speaks of washing, of restoration, of a mercy that reaches further than any sentence ever could.
I am reminded that justice is not the final word. God’s mercy is.
And that changes how I must live. If I am not careful, this work can harden me. I can start protecting myself by feeling less. I can reduce people to their worst acts. I can begin to think I stand safely on the side of the righteous and forget that before God, I too am capable of darkness, and utterly dependent on grace.
The real danger is not that I will stop believing in justice. It is that I will let sorrow turn into cynicism. That I will let anger crowd out compassion. That I will lose the ability to believe people can do better.
If scarlet can become white, then no one stands beyond the reach of mercy. Not the accused. Not the broken. Not me.
In the end, the only goal worth pursuing is not simply to secure justice, but to become someone who can still love after witnessing evil. Someone who can receive God’s mercy without pride and give it without fear.
Justice is my vocation. But mercy is my salvation.
(Today’s OXYGEN by Stacey Fernandez)
Prayer: Lord, do not let this work harden me. When I see too much darkness, remind me that Your mercy is deeper still.Thanksgiving: Thank You for the vocation of justice, for the privilege of standing up for the oppressed and naming evil for what it is.
OXYGEN 
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