“I am no prophet, nor a prophet’s son…”
Amos wasn’t a prophet- at least not an ‘official’ one, and yet he spoke on God’s behalf. In today’s world, he wouldn’t have been an ordained pastor. At best, Amos could be described as an itinerant shepherd and a guy who hawked fruit from the roadside. He had no credentials or degrees, certainly no impressive pedigree, nor anything else that our world uses to suggest that we should pay attention to someone. He had nothing but a charge from God to step up and speak up.
In spite of the fact that Amos wasn’t asked to present an easy or popular word, he served God as he was called- giving up the life he had imagined for the life God needed him to lead. He moved up to Samaria in the Northern Kingdom and told Israel of their coming destruction and exile. He told them of their faults, their distance from God, and of the judgment and punishment that awaited them.
Can you imagine a harder message to give your own people?
Can you imagine what it must have felt like to know that youhad to be the one to deliver it?
Can you imagine the faithfulness it took not to keep silent, or hide, or shrink back from the call?
That’s my word for the group: CALL
When God calls us, we are to answer. When God’s call doesn’t look as we’d imagine, we are still to answer. As Christians we love and serve God first and ourselves, our lives and our convenience last of all.
To what are you called these days?
Is it something that frightens you?
Have heart. You are not alone, and God is beside you.
PRAYER: Living God, acknowledging how hard it is for us to ask this, we pray that you’ll silence within each of us any thoughts but your own. May we listen, by the power of the Spirit to your call- and respond in faith- today, tomorrow, until your Kingdom come. In Jesus’ name we offer this and all of our prayers. Amen.
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