Ya know, sometimes God words things just right. Good enough to convey His point clearly, so I give you God. He will be quoting His original writing from Amos chapter 5, verses 7 – 14.
7) Woe to you who turn justice to vinegar and stomp righteousness into the mud.
8) Do you realize where you are? You’re in a cosmos star-flung with constellations by God, A world God wakes up each morning and puts to bed each night. God dips water from the ocean and gives the land a drink. GOD, God-revealed, does all this.
9) And he can destroy it as easily as make it. He can turn this vast wonder into total waste
10) People hate this kind of talk. Raw truth is never popular.
11) But here it is, bluntly spoken: Because you run roughshod over the poor and take the bread right out of their mouths, You’re never going to move into the luxury homes you have built. You’re never going to drink wine from the expensive vineyards you’ve planted.
12) I know precisely the extent of your violations, the enormity of your sins. Appalling! You bully right-living people, taking bribes right and left and kicking the poor when they’re down.
13) Justice is a lost cause. Evil is epidemic. Decent people throw up their hands. Protest and rebuke are useless, a waste of breath.
14) Seek good and not evil– and live! You talk about GOD, the God-of-the-Angel-Armies, being your best friend. Well, live like it, and maybe it will happen.
Copyright © 2017 Mark Brady, All rights reserved
You listen as they describe their current pain, despair, nightmare of a life. They go on and on without the slightest glimmer of hope on their face, or in their voice. They want relief, they want out, they want something so different then what they have. Like a blind man looking for his glasses, their searching is in vain.
Our founding fathers didn’t declare this, but congress did in 1956. They could have declared a lot of things when they were deciding what to inscribe on our currency. Something that would be used around the world. I’m sure after a lot of thought, it became obvious, the only thing to say was who they trusted in. Those men knew God and His word. After all, men came to this land for the “pursuit of religious freedom.” It just makes cents!
I have an earthly mother. (Pictured to the left with my granddaughter) I learned a lot from her. Like the joy of going barefoot. To appreciate a good movie. How to smile when you let someone have what they want over what you want. Today is the day to honor mothers. For some, that can be very difficult. Perhaps their mother didn’t exhibit the perfect love God intended. There could be lots of reasons for this, but maybe their mother did the best she could, considering who she was, at that time. Who knows what she was really going through then. Possibly they were hurt, angry, or even disappointed about the cards life had dealt her.
If I was to call you right now, and started speaking without first telling you who I was, you wouldn’t know it was me. I would start talking and you would say, “Who is this?” but the more often we talked, you would become familiar with the sound of my voice. The same goes for learning what it sounds like when God speaks to you. Joh 10:27 My sheep recognize my voice. I know them, and they follow me. (MSG), and we are God’s sheep.
“I’m looking for the next party!” One recently shared with me. The next day I read the following scriptures from the Old Testament book of Hosea 9: 1-6 (MSG).
He laid as still as he could. Any movement reminded him of the flogging his back took. The soldier placed the nail with the tip pressing his palm. He saw the other soldier rear back with the hammer. He turned his head. Bam! The nail drove through his flesh pinning him to the cross. That nail represented the times I took something that wasn’t mine.
brady, mark a. 