Micah 7:7-20

But as for me, I will keep watching for YAHWEH to break through. I will wait for the God who will save me, and I know my God will hear my cry. YAHWEH Listen, my enemy. Don’t gloat over me when I fall, for I will get back up even stronger. Whenever I feel darkness around me, YAHWEH himself will be the light that surrounds me. I must endure YAHWEH’s anger for a while because I have sinned against him. Yet he will still defend my cause and right every wrong done to me. He will expose it all and bring me out into the light, and I will experience firsthand his vindication. When my enemy sees this, she will be disgraced and covered with shame— she who sneered, “Where is this God of yours, YAHWEH?” I’ll see it with my own eyes as she is trampled down like mud in the streets. What a day that will be! A day for rebuilding your walls! A day for expanding your borders! A day when people come to you from everywhere— from the cities of Assyria, Egypt, and Tyre and all the way from the river Euphrates, from across the seas, and from every mountainous land. Those lands will become desolate because of the corruption of their inhabitants. Our kind Shepherd, watch over us, the flock that is your special inheritance. With your staff, lead your people to pasture. For we are like a flock confined to live in a forest with meadowland all around us. Let us graze again in the fertile fields of Bashan and Gilead as in the days of old. “I will show you mighty miracles as in the days when you came out of Egypt.” When the nations see your miracles, they will be ashamed, seeing that their power counts for nothing. They will put their hands over their mouths, too dumbfounded by your might to even speak, and their ears will become deaf. Let them lick the dust like snakes, like the crawling things of the earth. Let them come slinking out of their strongholds, trembling in terror before you, YAHWEH. Who is a merciful God like you? Your grace wipes the slate clean of guilt and pardons the rebellion of the remnant of your people. You don’t hold your anger against us forever, but you delight in showing faithful, tender love. Once more we ask: have tender mercy on us, tread our iniquities under your feet, and hurl all our sins to the bottom of the sea. You will demonstrate endless faithfulness to Jacob’s tribes and to Abraham’s descendants your constant love, just like you swore to our ancestors in ancient times.