The Bible Challenge, Day 316: Amos 3, Psalm 109 and Matthew 11
As a young adult after my first batch of higher education, I was a subscriber to the New Yorker magazine. My introduction to the New Yorker came in my teenage years at home, where I snagged each issue when it arrived and flipped through its pages to enjoy the cartoons. Inevitably at least one of them would feature a ragged, bearded prophet standing on a city street carrying a placard proclaiming doom in one fashion or another. My memory is that the prophet’s words are offered in vain, since no one pauses to listen except the magazine’s reader. When I read the prophet Amos’ pronouncement of woes soon to come, I picture that New Yorker doomsday prophet.
But the challenge of divine judgment is to stop, look and listen. The appropriate response is to wonder how we are contributing to the misery of the world and to the sorrow of God, starting in the places where we live, work, study and otherwise spend our days. For when we pause to listen to God’s criticism from the mouth of God’s prophet or God’s Son, then we have an opportunity to see the truth we try to hide from our own awareness – the truth of our self-concern, our blindness to our own faults, and our deafness to the sobbing of the desperate. This truth, humbly welcomed, leads us to the kind of repentance that changes our focus from ourselves to our neighbors. That turning is the Holy Spirit’s tool for renewing the face of the earth.
However, it is also easy to succumb to the delusion that our assessment of bad behavior and bad people is in line with God’s view. Then we rant like the author of Psalm 109 – pleading that our God who wants to set the world right again will smite our personal enemies and will bless us instead. As I read Psalm 109, I want to shake my head in mocking dismissal, mumbling with Christopher Robin, “Silly old Pooh!” But then I wonder whether I just may have the capacity to echo the psalmist’s sentiment, and if truth be told, I must admit that I can.
Life is woe when we forget who we are – beloved children of God, equipped to carry God’s love in action into a woe-filled world.
What is Jesus trying to teach you today about yourself?
What is your growing edge?
What pain of another does God want you to see and hear today?
Pause to wonder and take courage to respond.
As a young adult after my first batch of higher education, I was a subscriber to the New Yorker magazine. My introduction to the New Yorker came in my teenage years at home, where I snagged each issue when it arrived and flipped through its pages to enjoy the cartoons. Inevitably at least one of them would feature a ragged, bearded prophet standing on a city street carrying a placard proclaiming doom in one fashion or another. My memory is that the prophet’s words are offered in vain, since no one pauses to listen except the magazine’s reader. When I read the prophet Amos’ pronouncement of woes soon to come, I picture that New Yorker doomsday prophet.
But the challenge of divine judgment is to stop, look and listen. The appropriate response is to wonder how we are contributing to the misery of the world and to the sorrow of God, starting in the places where we live, work, study and otherwise spend our days. For when we pause to listen to God’s criticism from the mouth of God’s prophet or God’s Son, then we have an opportunity to see the truth we try to hide from our own awareness – the truth of our self-concern, our blindness to our own faults, and our deafness to the sobbing of the desperate. This truth, humbly welcomed, leads us to the kind of repentance that changes our focus from ourselves to our neighbors. That turning is the Holy Spirit’s tool for renewing the face of the earth.
However, it is also easy to succumb to the delusion that our assessment of bad behavior and bad people is in line with God’s view. Then we rant like the author of Psalm 109 – pleading that our God who wants to set the world right again will smite our personal enemies and will bless us instead. As I read Psalm 109, I want to shake my head in mocking dismissal, mumbling with Christopher Robin, “Silly old Pooh!” But then I wonder whether I just may have the capacity to echo the psalmist’s sentiment, and if truth be told, I must admit that I can.
Life is woe when we forget who we are – beloved children of God, equipped to carry God’s love in action into a woe-filled world.
What is Jesus trying to teach you today about yourself?
What is your growing edge?
What pain of another does God want you to see and hear today?
Pause to wonder and take courage to respond.
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