AMOS The Wrath of Just Righteousness….. and Love

Reading about God’s wrath in the Book of Amos,  it might be easy to ask, ‘How can a loving God show so much anger?’, or ‘How can a God of mercy be willing to destroy towns and cities?’  Where is this forgiveness God asks us to give one another, ‘70 x 7’?  What about love and mercy?  What questions run through your thoughts?

For now, I invite you to put these questions aside and revisit Amos from a different perspective.  Remember the Gospel scene where Jesus overturns the table in the Temple because people are desecrating the Sabbath for the sake of profit?  It’s clear that Jesus is enraged in this story.

Intense anger, wrath, rage or whatever we choose to name this measure of confrontation usually comes  from one of two sources…and sometime from both: either pain or deep fear, or perhaps a sense of ‘just righteousness’.  In Amos, as in the Gospels, I believe God’s wrath expresses God’s pain and ‘just righteousness’, rather than just destruction. While this means of expression is not shown in ways you and I would desire ‘love and grace’ to be shown, at the chore of this wrath might there be a deep love?                                                                               


Sound strange?  How can wrath and love be spoken of in the same context?  In these passages, I hear God saying, “Look at how you are living out your lives without care for others or this land, after all I have given you?  Were you not created and freed to be stewards?”  Perhaps Gods expression of wrath speaks to people destroying themselves and their towns by their actions and disregard for life.

I am convinced that God is a God of relationships. (Genesis).  The close of Amos describes God’s desire to restore all that has been destroyed.  Herein lays mercy and love. 

In my own life, how often do I fall short of God’s righteousness.  It’s a process, a journey.  So I prefer to read Amos as God prodding me to live more mindfully with gratitude and prayer.  I believe Grace lives in the journey.  What about you?

Shalom,

Susan Moss

p.s.  What do you think about the powerful messages in Amos being conveyed through a field worker?  

Elijah Rocks

The story of El-ijah [Yahweh is my God] is dominated by the operatic scene where, in the contest with the prophets of Ba-al, he prays and down comes fire from heaven to illustrate to the [once again] wayward Israelites that Yahweh is the true God.

How many of us have that much faith in the power of our prayer?

At the devotional for the Vision Board this past week, Pastor Mark discussed the idea of Opinions vs Convictions. Many people have religious opinions, but fewer probably have convictions. What is a conviction?

Martin Luther King Jr.  -- “ I can’t promise you that it won’t get you beaten. I can’t promise you that it won’t get your house bombed. I can’t promise you won’t get scarred up a bit – but we must stand up for what is right. If you haven’t discovered something that is worth dying for, you haven’t found anything worth living for. “

Elijah placed not only his reputation on the line, but his life as well.  

Joseph Heller in his novel Catch 22 echoes this:
“Anything worth living for," said Nately, "is worth dying for." "And anything worth dying for," "answered the old man, "is certainly worth living for."

We live in a land of religious freedom. We are free to worship God in whatever way we choose. But that freedom does not include a right to avoid criticism for one’s beliefs. Nor does that freedom protect us from harm.

Nor should it. Challenges to our faith should challenge, deepen and clarify our convictions. What separates our opinions from our convictions is our willingness to put “ blood on the word” as one of my college friends used to say. Will I stand up to the false gods of our culture? Will I challenge them at the risk of my reputation? My life?

Is my faith an opinion? Or a conviction? What is worth living for?

Will I allow God to show his power through what I do?

Convict me, God. Amen.
Paul S.

Elijah

Image courtesy of the Providence Lithograph Company [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons


Happy New Year! And welcome to another blogging series. English Lutheran is participating in the ELCA Book of Faith initiative through a four week preaching series on prophets. Here is the line-up:

January 22  Elijah (1 Kings 17 to 2 Kings 2)

January 29 Amos (Amos 1-9)

February 5 Hosea (Hosea 1-14)

February 12 Jonah (Jonah 1-4)

We will be blogging along with this series, starting this week with Elijah.

One of my New Year's Resolutions was to really dig into my Bible more. I joined friends on a facebook group called Read Through the Bible 2012. Each day, I am sent assigned readings and invited to participate in discussion. The group holds me accountable, and I am reading sections of the Bible that I'm not sure I've ever read before (Leviticus, anyone?). A side benefit that I didn't anticipate is that I am usually thinking about Bible stories that don't correspond to the lectionary readings, which changes how I listen to a sermon and reflect on worship through the week.

My lightbulb moment with Elijah was how often Biblical heroes seem to be in non-exciting places when God asks them to do something that seems impossible, they protest, God cares for and equips them, and then, with God's help, it all works out.

Moses, for example, was tending sheep when God called him to return to Egypt to save the Israelites (see Exodus 3).  He protests about being slow of speech, obeys God, and things miraculous things happen with God's help--ranging from a staff-snake to plagues to a stubborn Pharaoh relenting to Moses' request. Joseph spent time in a well and in prison before serving in a place of honor and power (Genesis 37).  Elijah, our focus for the week, was under a tree ready to die and 40 days later in a cave when God gave him a new mission (1 Kings 19). In all of these instances, God gave orders, but also lovingly equipped His chosen to serve.

As we continue through the week and a new year, I would invite you to consider your faith journey. Where is God? What is God equipping, and asking, you to do?

Prayers and blessings for your journey,
Rachel

Season of Waiting

I wrote the simple poem below six years ago during my Chaplain Residency.  During pastoral visits, as I listened to people share their wants and needs, I often envisioned their desires against the fabric of God’s Hope.  While this was not always an easy thing to do, especially when a family’s faith seemed to be hidden in struggles or pain.  God’s presence would eventually be evidenced as a place of rest, calm, centering and over time... hope.

During this season of activities, gatherings, errands and yes, even worship, I wish you still, quiet moments of sensing God’s presence in your heart, as we wait with Mary and Joseph for Emmanuel, the infinite Gift of Love and Hope to be born in  a manger. 

That dusty red fire truck soon to be his

A wished for letter not yet here

Standing in line to buy bread and milk.

Waiting

Those critical test results still to come

The chance to be home on Christmas day

A new job to help them pay their rent.

Hoping

The son standing on guard too far from home

Time enough to be with her far away friend

The rosy cheeked doll she eyed in the window

Longing

Receiving a raise for reaching the goal

Hearing the first cry of their newborn son

Trusting Santa will come as they sleep through the night

Believing

So how did you wait while your baby grew inside

Did your hopes burn bright when you first heard the News

The days must have grown long as you awaited His birth

Yet the One you were waiting for

Came to give your Life

Grace

In this Season of Waiting, God’s Grace is already shining on you.  Can you sense this?

~ Susan Moss

Prayer will bring about greater things than just a building.

As we approach dedication Sunday we focus on prayer. There is a prayer vigil on Thursday evening and we have all been asked to pray about our giving and for English Lutheran Church. As I see my refrigerator magnet each day (many times), I am constantly reminded to pray and focus on what God wants us to do for English Lutheran. Pastor Mark keeps telling us that this is not just about a building, but about our faith and this process of bathing the Church in prayer will bring about greater things than just a building. I will say for our family, that is already happening.


I like this idea of a family gathering together and praying for big decisions in life. So, I decided to apply that to our own little family. We gathered together as a family and talked about all the things going on and what we want our lives to really look like. Now every day each of us prays for ELC and for our family's future and focus in life. We have been greatly enriched by bathing ELC in prayer and my hope is that you all have found that this process of community prayer has brought benefits beyond a decision as to how much to give to the Capital Campaign.


May your prayer life continue to grow and enrich all that you enjoy in life. Amen.


Eva Marie R.

A Dwelling Place for All

Is there a special place in your heart that your mind travels to when your soul needs a safe place to dwell?  When life has become too complicated and you long for a "simpler place in time?"  When I was younger, this special place was my grandparents' farm in Deforest, Wisconsin.  A quiet man of the earth, my grandfather raised pigs and grew field corn and tobacco.  My grandmother was gracious and always hospitable -  an amazing cook, a gifted quilter and seamstress, and an award-winning baker.  Their door was open to anyone in need of a meal or in need of good company.  The aroma of freshly baked bread and the warmth from the wood burning stove had a way of saying to every guest -  "Welcome,  take your coat off and stay a while."   As a teenager, and well into my adult years, a visit to my grandparents' was always a time of respite and renewal for me.

As the years moved on and my faith grew deeper, the Church became that special place in my heart.  The place I learned to turn to for security, friendship, and a sense of belonging.  The Church became that safe place for my soul to dwell.  In Psalm 23, David reflects on the wonderful assurances we have as God's people.  He ends the Psalm by proclaiming "I shall dwell in the House of the Lord my whole life long."  What a comfort. What a promise.  To dwell with God's people forever.  To be God's child forever.  To be redeemed.  To be assured of a place in God's House forever. What a treasure! The world may change.  Our lives may be uncertain at times, but we can be assured that we will always have the Church.  We will always have God's family to surround us. 

I cannot imagine my life without the Church and I give thanks to God that I don't have to.  The Church is my lifeline.  It's what sustains me.  It's where I get my strength and confidence to be a follower of Christ in the world.  As we prepare our hearts to make a commitment to our capital appeal, and prayerfully consider our gift, I invite you to reflect on how the Church has been a blessing on your life.  How the Church has changed your life.  And then, consider the generations to come who will need the Church.  And finally, consider this:  that well over half of our La Crosse community does not have a church home - a "dwelling place" where they can be surrounded by God's family.  What an opportunity for us to create a building that will warmly welcome the stranger.  And a building that will not only welcome the stranger, but a dwelling place that gently says "take your coat off and stay a while."

In Christ, Together We Grow.

In peace,

Cara H.

Money, money, money, money....MONEY

“Some people got to have it
Some people really need it
Listen to me y'all, do things, do things, do bad things with it
You wanna do things, do things, do things, good things with it”

As I’m writing this blog I’m listening to the O’Jays 1973 hit. As your read this blog, it may help to listen to it. {Turn it up!} Here’s a link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ll3uipTO-4A

Money. We do things with it. We do things for it. The Mean Green. The Almighty Dollar.

My financial adviser likes to quote Kahlil Gibran “ Money is like love; it kills slowly and painfully the one who withholds it, and it enlivens the other who turns it on his fellow man.”

Money is a medium by which we tell the world what we value, by how we acquire it and how we spend it– or to put it more simply – Every dollar you spend is a statement of your values. I learned that lesson the hard way. I let money control me, define my relationships, impact my work, occupy my thoughts, keep me from sleeping – then I realized I could control it and make it do what I wanted it to.

This is nothing new.

Jesus said in Matthew 6:21: Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be.

Rick Warren wrote” If you show me how you spend your time and how you spend your money, I’ll show you what’s important in your life. No matter what you say is important—show me your schedule and your checkbook stubs and I’ll tell you what’s really important to you.”

James W Frick, the highly successful VP of Development for Notre Dame put it this way, “ Don’t tell me what your priorities are, show me how you spend your money and I’ll tell you what they are.”

Pointed, pithy comments.

Yes, we’re in a capital campaign to make some much-needed improvements to our congregational gathering place. That’s gonna take money. Everyone will make a decision about what they will contribute to the project. Does it align with your values? Is it important to you? Is it a priority? Wish you could give more? Then give more. I recently sold some old books I no longer had use for. Now I reclaimed some space, some other book collector is happy and I can make a donation to something I value. Win-Win.

“Don't let, don't let, don't let money rule you
For the love of money
Money can change people sometimes
Don't let, don't let, don't let money fool you
Money can fool people sometimes
People! Don't let money, don't let money change you,
it will keep on changing, changing up your mind.”

“For the Love of Money” Lyrics by Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff