Obviously, the similarities between Amos’s time and our own are startling. This book feels like it has been ripped from today’s headlines, and its message carries a stinging rebuke for the consumerist mindset that is rampant in our own society. Because of this, there are some vitally important lessons we can learn from this little-known part of God’s Story.
The first and foremost is this. Don’t mess with the people
God loves.
God’s love for people, all people, but especially those who
find themselves marginalized by society, is so fierce that mistreating them is
something YHWH simply cannot tolerate. He doesn’t seem to be as bothered by
people mistreating Him as He is with people mistreating others. He simply
cannot let it go on for very long without intervening. Amos’s message makes it
sound like God values how we treat other people as much as (if not more than)
how we treat Him. And if it’s that important, we’d better listen up!
It also seems that the lower the social status a person has,
the more interested God is in how that person gets treated. Children, women,
single mothers, foreigners, day-labourers, migrant farm workers, these tend to
be the people God stands up for most vigorously, the people who cannot stand up
for themselves. God is sacramentally present among the poor.
Amos delivers a message that makes it sound as if God’s own
people have become His enemies. The people of Israel are described in the same
kinds of terms Amos uses to describe the Philistines, the Edomites and the rest
of the pagans living around them. It’s almost as if Amos is saying that the Israelites
are no better than anyone else.
Actually, there’s no “almost” about it. From God’s
perspective, the Israelites are just as bad as their neighbours, in some ways
even worse, because they should know better. And God calls them on the carpet.
It’s not the manner or location of their worship. Although their worship has
obviously been corrupted, God seems not to mind that so much as He minds the
way they are treating people, particularly the widows, orphans and foreigners
that He loves.
Hundreds of years later, an “expert” tried to test Jesus’
knowledge of the Law by asking Him, “Which commandment is the greatest?” Jesus
couldn’t just offer one; He offered two. “Love God with everything you’ve got,
and love other people like you love yourself” (see Matthew 22:34-40).
Jesus didn’t give two answers because He was looking for
extra credit. He offered them because the two are inseparably linked in the
mind of God. You simply cannot love God if you don’t also love others. In fact,
the level to which you fulfill the second command is the level to which you can
claim to have fulfilled the first (see 1 John 4:20).
Father, I want to pursue a lifestyle of love. I wish to
display Your agape to the people I encounter today so that they will see Christ
in and through me. Keep me from playing favourites so that I will not succumb
to the blunder of viewing people according to their social and economic status.
Just as You show special concern and kindness for those who are downtrodden and
overlooked, may I also treat such people with special love and consideration.
In spite of appearances to the contrary, You have accorded great dignity and
worth to all who have been created in Your image, and by Your grace I want to
imitate You. I ask You for the power to love the unlovely and notice those who
are overlooked. In this way, I will display my love for You in the way I love
the people You love.
In Jesus’s name, Amen
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