Be prepared

If you want to be really challenged, read the Old Testament book of Amos. I read it this morning and pondered how this lay preacher and rancher could so boldly confront the status quo of his nation in a time of prosperity.

All was well in Israel on the surface. Secure borders, confident leadership, well equipped military, thriving economy, good weather, abundant crops, comfortable homes. The King and the ruling classes lived in luxury and were blessed by so many things. Yet, they forgot the most important thing. They forgot the source of these blessings. They forgot the Lord their God. They forgot the covenant relationship they had with the LORD GOD Almighty who had delivered them from slavery in Egypt. These ungrateful, distracted people had turned from their God to their own concerns and efforts.

So, the Lord began to send them messengers, the prophets, to call them back. To urge them to return to true worship and the God-centered life that exalts justice and mercy, and living of the Ten Commandments and the Law. They ignored the prophets and continued to go their own way. No matter what the LORD did, his covenant people in the northern Kingdom of Israel did not return wholeheartedly to their Lord. He sent famines, plagues, droughts, crop blights, lightning from heaven, and still they did not repent. So now in Amos 4, he swears to return himself, saying

"Therefore this is what I will do to you, Israel, and because I will do this to you, Prepare to meet your God, O Israel. He who forms the mountains, creates the winds, and reveals his thoughts to man, he who turns dawn to darkness, and treads the high places of the earth, the LORD GOD Almighty is his name."

Let us remember how we have been greatly blessed. I have been blessed in countless ways. Yet, I feel in my life the precursors of judgment, the harbingers of God's wrath, calling me to repentance. My cancer battle is one reminder among others. I feel great today. No sign of illness. No sign of visible disease. But lest I forget, God sends me, and all of us, reminders. These moral harbingers remind us of God's moral standards, and our own mortality. May we come face to face with our maker, prepared to meet Him in Jesus Christ! Thanks to God that He is an Almighty Righteous Judge but also a God of great compassion and mercy, who does not give us what we deserve!

©2010 Ray Woolridge