Words from WW Blog

I’ve never met Maya Moore, but I’d like to someday. Not because she has been one of the top five women basketball players, although we could talk hoops, but because of her calling and passion.

Her calling for the past couple of years has revolved around an inmate in the Missouri State Penitentiary named Jonathan Irons, now 40 years old. Jonathan was convicted of burglary and assault at the age of 16 and sentenced to 50 years.

But Maya, who has known him since she was 18, saw an absence of justice in his situation and she couldn’t ignore it. In 2019 she announced that she would not play the WNBA basketball season and would focus on gaining freedom for Irons. Recently she said she wouldn’t play the 2020 season either because of her driving passion to aging his release.

Recently, that calling was realized as a judge vacated the ruling in the case and Jonathan Irons became a free man. His conviction was wiped off his record. When he stood next to Maya outside the prison walls, his advocate wore a t-shirt with the words of Micah 6:8 printed on the front: “And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”

Words that she has lived by as a result of her strong Christian convictions. How seldom do we see a person’s beliefs be so encompassing of their life that whatever isn’t necessary to their Christ-following slides to the side? So often the Christ gets attached to some other kind of life anchor, like career paths and the striving for significance, and tries to hold on to us.

There is a sense of satisfied exhaling when I read Maya’s grip of Micah 6:8. That she gets it! She might lose financial riches, but she gets it. She may come back and play basketball again, losing two years of her prime, but she gets it. Her anchor holds and the ripple effect of that is that one man is no longer being held.

And, of what I’ve seen of Maya Moore, the last part of that verse…walk humbly with your God…is who she is.

Wow…and praise the Lord!

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

This entry was posted on July 4, 2020 at 3:48 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.