Living in the Spirit
July 4, 2016

Scripture Reading: Amos 7:7-17

This is what he showed me: the Lord was standing beside a wall built with a plumb-line, with a plumb-line in his hand. And the Lord said to me, ‘Amos, what do you see?’ And I said, ‘A plumb-line.’ Then the Lord said,
‘See, I am setting a plumb-line
   in the midst of my people Israel;
   I will never again pass them by;
   the high places of Isaac shall be made desolate,
   and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste,
   and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword.’ –Amos 7:7-9

After two warnings God lets down a plumb line and finds the nation of Israel sorely lacking integrity, like children’s bocks stacked in such a way that a slight wind would blow them over. While Amos may have had some concerns about the actual structural integrity of Israel’s fortifications, he is definitely talking about the people’s being in alignment with God’s will. They weren’t.

I often thought as I listened to the evening news in recent years in the USA, how I could have save my time keeping up with daily events because a simple reading of the book of Amos would have told me all I needed to know. Israel suffered from an epidemic of greed and privilege much as we do today. What is important in our society is how much money we can take in no matter who we have to step on or over to get it. The end of the story for Israel was not good. They were taken into bondage and lost everything.

I do not understand this so much as punishment but the absolute outcome of wasting the abundance that comes from being in synch with God. It is not abundance measured by the stock market but fullness of a life centered in love.

Prayer: Lord forgive us for trading your abundant life for the lesser things in life that may appear to have integrity by can never be a trustworthy foundation for wholeness. Amen.

All scriptures are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized 
Edition, copyright 1989, 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council 
of Churches of Christ in the United States of American. Used by permission. All rights 
reserved.