Read
Judgment on Israel
1I saw a vision of the Lord
standing by the temple altar,
and he said,
“Shake the columns
until the tops fall loose,
and the doorposts crumble.
Then make the pieces fall
on the people below.
I will take a sword and kill
anyone who escapes.
2“If they dig deep into the earth
or climb to the sky,
I'll reach out and get them.
3If they escape to the peaks
of Mount Carmel,
I'll search and find them.
And if they hide from me
at the bottom of the ocean,
I'll command a sea monster
to bite them.
4I'll send a sword to kill them,
wherever their enemies
drag them off as captives.
I'm determined to hurt them,
not to help them.”
His Name Is the Lord
5When the Lord God All-Powerful
touches the earth, it melts,
and its people mourn.
God makes the earth rise
and then fall,
just like the Nile River.
6He built his palace in the heavens
and let its foundations
rest on the earth.
He scoops up the ocean
and empties it on the earth.
His name is the Lord.
Reflect
“I saw the Lord” (9:1 NIV). Have you? What does God look like? How much room does he take up? Our minds cannot cope with God. It is true: there is a hole the size of eternity and infinity, right in the middle. Our minds have a sink hole that does not end. But it’s boarded over. Sometimes it floods and half our treasures, and ideas, are sucked down, spinning like debris in a drain. But God, out there. God in front of our eyes?
And he speaks. “He said to me” says Amos, as if, well, what else would he do? We read these accounts. When we are young they are adventures. Now they are inspirations. But don’t we gloss over the surface? Do we imagine a real man with a real God? If it is “just” a vision, is it less extraordinary or more?
What does he say? Everything solid will crumble. Everyone living will die. No one will escape. He is “determined to hurt them, not to help them.” That is not the God of love, is it? Is he just “God All-Powerful” whose touch melts the earth, who “scoops up the ocean” and pours it on the land?
Or is this the danger of verses and the distortion of daily devotionals? One day he is merciful, the next merciless. How many words are enough to paint a picture? A thousand? Of God, a million? It will always be a sketch. But take a magnifying glass and what will you see? what you looked at, what you looked for.
The daily devotional’s great value is it builds a portrait, day by day: the joy, the despair, the hope, the blessing, the cursing, the holding to account, the debt cancelling, the love, the justice. But he moves as we turn the page, we glimpse and then lose him. We are the reader and the read. He grabs us, by the text. He is inside and out. We try, but cannot close the book on him. But he can close the book on us.
I saw him, but he saw me first.
Respond
Read my heart. Show me the good, the bad and the ugly. Fertilize the flowers, pluck the weeds and heal the broken. Show me You. Show me what you look like so that I might glimpse what I might be, what you will one day make me into: someone who will always see you, know you completely, and never be parted from you.
text here …
Alexander Best
Alexander cultivated a network of Christian leaders, OneMission, to promote collaboration, including service to the 15,000 new students arriving at University of Toronto each fall, under the umbrella, ServeToronto. He helped foster the same at the PanAm Games in Toronto and is the former Canadian Director of the Lausanne Movement Canada. He publishes THisToronto, a social media platform promoting & connecting the activities of over 300 ministries and churches in the city."