Huge Hope: Major Power in the Minor Prophetsنموونە

The Lord is inescapable, and your feelings about how to interpret that sentence will vary greatly depending on your feelings about God in general.

In today’s passage, the prophet Amos describes a period of judgment he calls “The day of the Lord,” and within that description he uses language of inescapability and inevitability. Let’s check out verses 18-20:

“Woe to you who desire the day of the Lord! Why do you want the day of the Lord? It is darkness, not light, as if someone fled from a lion and was met by a bear or went into a house and rested a hand against the wall and was bitten by a snake. Is not the day of the Lord darkness, not light, and gloom with no brightness in it?”

Seems pretty relentless, doesn’t it? Especially so if you’re trying to hold onto your life as your own, to live your own way and keep God out of it.

But He is inevitable. He wants you—all of you—and He will do everything He can to cut off your escape routes so that you eventually surrender to His will.

If you see God as an adversary, then you’ll always live in fear of the day when He eventually gets you.

If you see God as a loving parent who wants nothing but the best for you and your life, then this imagery of predator and prey, of all-encompassing nighttime, takes on a different meaning.

God is for you. God wants you. God will pursue you to the ends of the earth and until time itself expires.

So what will you do with that?

Let justice roll down like water and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.