Walking the Way: A daily devotional

  Obadiah 1:11 11  On the day that you stood aloof,     on the day that strangers carried off his wealth and foreigners entered his gates     and cast lots for Jerusalem,     you were like one of them. Thought for the day – Standing on the Other Side of the Street Here’s a question for you: ‘what’s the difference between doing harm and watching harm happen?’ Obadiah says, not much. Edom didn’t march on Jerusalem. Verse 11 says they “stood aloof” while strangers carried off the city’s wealth. And then comes the line: “you were just like one of them.” Edom wasn’t a stranger either. The Hebrew word for brother, ach , runs right through this passage, and it’s the same word Moses used in Numbers 20:14: “This is what your brother Israel says.” These two nations were family. That’s what makes it so raw. The betrayal was like a knife in the back.   Then notice the rhythm to verses 12-14: “You should ...

Amos 9:15 I will plant them on their land,     and they shall never again be uprooted     out of the land that I have given them,” says the Lord your God. Thought for the day – The challenge of prophecy One of the challenges of reading scripture some two and a half thousand years after it's been written is history. And by that I mean the fact that so much has happened between when the prophecy was uttered and us reading it today. So an example of it is our verse today. Amos says that God would plant the people of Israel on their land and they shall never again be uprooted out of the land that God has given them. And yet we know that the Northern Kingdom was completely destroyed and that even the tribes of Judah and Benjamin were sent into exile. Though Benjamin and Judah did come back to Jerusalem, even then however, Jerusalem was completely destroyed and the Jews completely dispersed in 70 AD, when the Romans sacked Jerusalem. So, the questio...

Amos 8:11 The days are going to come, declares the Almighty Lord, when I will send a famine throughout the land. It won’t be an ordinary famine or drought. Instead, there will be a famine of hearing the words of the Lord. Thought for the day – A Famine of Hearing One of the joys of being in a new part of the world is learning the different stories. I recently heard a story about a young lady named Mary Jones. She was 15 years old at the time and lived in North Wales around the 1800s. Mary saved for six years to buy a Bible. The story goes that she walked some 25 miles from her home to a place called Bala to find Thomas Charles. When she got there, she discovered that his copies had all been sold out. Charles was so moved that he found one for her. And her journey is said to have helped inspire the founding of the British and Foreign Bible Society a few years later. You might be thinking, what's that got to do with today's reading? Well, in Amos 8 the chapter opens with a b...

  Amos 7:14 Amos responded, “I’m not a prophet, and I’m not a disciple of the prophets. I am a rancher and a grower of figs. Thought for the day – Not a Prophet, Just a Farmer Today’s chapter is an interesting one. God changes his mind because Amos asks him to. That in itself is remarkable because we sometimes think that God does not or will not change his mind. But look who God is listening to. A farmer. Amos was a shepherd who also grew figs. In his own words he wasn’t a prophet or even a disciple of a prophet. He was a farmer. And yet God listened to him and changed his mind. And it got me thinking abut the times we may have had the opportunity to speak to God and change something and we didn’t because we didn’t feel we could. Sometimes we feel that we can’t speak for God because we are…insert reason here… But the reality is we are God’s Holy people, his Royal Priesthood. We don’t need to be clergy, or prophets, or whatever we think we are that’s stopping us. We just n...

Amos 6:1 How horrible it will be for those who are at ease in Zion, for those who feel secure on the mountain of Samaria, and for the heads of the leading nations, to whom the nation of Israel comes. Thought for the day – Comfortable, not callous Jesus tells a challenging account of a poor man called Lazarus. He lives outside the gates of a wealthy man in abject poverty. He dies and goes to heaven, the rich man dies and ends up in hell being tormented. Jesus is making a point about money and what it reveals about people’s hearts. A point bought home in 2018 when a homeless person in Liverpool, woke up to find someone who had been out partying, standing over him urinating on him. An echo of an incident in New York in the 1970s, when a millionaire was photographed urinating on another homeless man. What both of these demonstrate is a callousness to the plight of those considerably worse off. I don’t think God doesn’t want us to be comfortable. And I do think we as a church ...

Amos 5:24 But let justice flow like a river and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. Thought for the day – A River, Not a Tap In 1834, six farm labourers from Tolpuddle in Dorset are sentenced to seven years’ transportation to Australia after swearing an oath to organise against falling wages. Their leader, George Loveless, was a Methodist local preacher. The public outcry was so fierce that they were pardoned and brought home. It was worship lived outside of the walls of the church that got them sent to Australia. In Amos 5, God says some of the most uncomfortable words in the Bible to those who would class ourselves as being religious or followers of Jesus. ‘I hate your festivals. I won’t listen to the music of your harps. I can’t imagine me saying that from the pulpit on a Sunday! Why would God say it? The answer is that worship that never leaves the building is just noise. But our verse today is the heart of Amos’ message to the people. Justice is a river. Righteousness is a...