Reading: Amos 8:4-7
Hear this, you who trample on the needy, and bring to ruin the poor of the land, saying, “When will the new moon be over so that we may sell grain, and the Sabbath, so that we may offer wheat for sale? We will make the ephah smaller and the shekel heavier and practice deceit with false balances, buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals and selling the sweepings of the wheat.” The Lord has sworn by the pride of Jacob: Surely I will never forget any of their deeds. Reflection My daughter Claire and I have a funny kind of banter. She knows I’m not a morning person. I know that she is at her brightest and best self long before I’ve turned on the coffee maker. So, in the mornings, she knows that if she wants me to be awake to pay attention to her, it’s going to take time. And reminders. Because it’s possible that I don’t just hop out of bed as soon as I hear the alarm. (Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve ever actually hopped out of bed.) Claire usually gets to the point where she is tapping me on the head and saying, “This is your third AND FINAL wake-up call!” And then I usually say something like “okay, okay, okay, I’m up, I’m up, I’m up.” I think Amos has gotten to a point here where he is trying to give *yet another* wake-up call to God’s people. So, he has to get a little more severe with his language. “You who trample on the needy and bring to ruin the poor of the land.” Yikes. It might be easy for us to push Amos off into his historical context, but those words should hit us over the head like a twelve-year-old trying to wake up her mother without coffee. And it should make us have the response, “okay, okay, okay….I get it now. I’m going to start doing better.” Old Testament prophets have a way of smacking us over the head with wake-up calls. At their core, though, they are pointing us toward God’s radical, transformative grace. The wake-up calls always point us to God doing a new thing in our lives, just like Claire’s wake-up calls bring me into a new day. (Does that mean that the alarm clock is like the law and my coffee is like the gospel? I’ll ponder this while the coffee pot warms up.) –Sarah Hershberger, mother of a morning person Prayer Gracious and loving God, thank you for using all kinds of ways to wake us up to life with you. Guide us to see the new things you are doing, and remind us to see the world through your eyes of grace. Amen.
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