The Times Are Evil (Amos 5:13)

 


Saturday, July 20, 2024


Psalm 48

Amos 5:1-17

Romans 1:16-25


The Times Are Evil (Amos 5:13)


Have you ever found yourself wondering why people can’t just behave? Why are some people inclined to greed, or crime, or bribery, selfishness? Why can’t everyone just get along and look after one another?


This general sense of unease and depression can get to us. There’s a line in today’s prophecy that sounds like it could have come out of the book of Proverbs: “The prudent shall keep silence in that time; for it is an evil time”. St Paul then twists the knife: people know the truth of God, but deliberately darken their own minds, becoming foolish. And we are living in the result of that.


So what is the solution? Has God just left us to our own self-made misery? Far from it! “Seek me and live” proclaims the voice from heaven. Seek the Lord and live, the Lord who made Pleiades and Orion, who turns midnight into dawn, and darkens day into night, who calls for the waters of the sea and pours them out over the face of the land – seek this Lord, and live, and be brought into the light of God’s truth, and the peace of his love.


We have a sword in one hand and a trowel in the other. A great hinge of history stands before us, and we are tasked with the seemingly insurmountable problem of bringing about the kingdom of heaven on earth. There are those who hate the one who upholds justice in court and detest the one who tells the truth. Yet nothing can come against the Lord, who gives us this very simple and amazingly generous instruction: Seek me and live.


The times are evil, but the Lord is good, and he is calling us to his warm embrace.


When you feel overwhelmed by what is happening in the world, how do you remind yourself to seek the Lord?


O Lord of the stars and the seas, keep speaking to me of your generous love, so that I may see things from your perspective, and trust you, and live.

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