Harvest is part of judgement, and judgement part of harvest.
Seek the LORD and live,
or he will sweep through the house of Joseph like a fire;
it will devour,
and Bethel will have no one to quench it.
Seek good, not evil,
that you may live.
Then the LORD God Almighty will be with you,
just as you say he is.
Hate evil, love good;
maintain justice in the courts.
Perhaps the LORD God Almighty will have mercy
on the remnant of Joseph.
--Amos 5:6,14-15
I have heard it said in some quarters that we are living in the end times because the world seems to be hurtling towards its doom, and apparently the 'signs of the age' are increasingly manifest.
Not that I disagree about the signs of the age, but nonetheless I can't help wondering what's so different about this age compared to the ages before. I'm sure the Roman Inquisition was no less horrifying than the Holocaust, nor the Crusades less terrible than the War on Terror.
The call of God in Amos has echoed throughout history and echoes still: seek the Lord, seek good, seek justice.
Do horses run on the rocky crags?
Does one plow there with oxen?
But you have turned justice into poison
and the fruit of righteousness into bitterness--
you who rejoice in the conquest of Lo Debar
and say, "Did we not take Karnaim by our own strength?"
--Amos 6:12-13
According to the NIV text note, 'Lo Debar' means 'nothing' and 'Karnaim' means 'horn', which here symbolises strength.
I am inclined to agree with Alissa that evil is less an entity on its own (as in an 'evil act' perpetrated) and more a matter of a 'wrong good' done. Amos 6:12 illustrates the perversion of the natural order of things and I think this harmonises with the thrust of Genesis, which is that sin and all that we know as evil traces its roots to the corruption of that which was meant for good.
And the line that immediately follows in verse 13 puts it bluntly, in an almost Ecclesiastical manner: "you who rejoice in the conquest of 'nothing'..."
We who build our own castles in the air and boast of our strength, in the face of the fact that what we build today can be so easily torn down tomorrow. And Jesus was clear about this in His teachings on storing our treasures and seeking the Kingdom of God.
Reading Amos over the last few days has been an enriching and sobering process. I am being reminded of God's original purpose for creation and the promise of restoration. And I am being encouraged even to live for Him in this in-between time.
The futility of Israel's attempts to keep itself afloat is also our futility, and it is good to know that our hope and security and future is in One whose strength is not our strength, whose call is unflinchingly severe yet full of grace; and for whom we were created that we may seek Him and live, that we may turn from our ways and our strivings and learn to breathe and live in Him.
