Walking the Way: A daily devotional

Amos 1:15 Ammon's king and leaders     will be dragged away. I, the Lord, have spoken!   Thought for the day – When the Borders Get Too Small Amos 1:15 is a verse you could walk straight past. In the CEV it reads, “Ammon’s king and leaders will be dragged away.” It’s the tail end of a prophecy against a nation most of us couldn’t find on a map, so it’s easy to skim. biblehub But look at what comes just before it. In Gilead, Ammon’s soldiers cut open pregnant women to grab a bit more land. The most vulnerable people imaginable were treated as collateral damage for a bigger border. And God, through Amos, says: I saw that, and it won’t go unanswered. Then he signs his name to it. Notice who gets named. Not just the king, but the leaders too. The very people who were supposed to protect Ammon were the ones who built its cruelty, and nobody gets to hide behind their position. Isn’t that uncomfortable? Because it’s so easy to read Amos as a book about other people. John We...

Joel 3:10 Beat your plowshares into swords     and your pruning hooks into spears; let the weakling say,     “I am a warrior!” Thought for the day – Reversed Thunder As I was reading our chapter today I had to do a double take. I read our verse today and thought ‘hang on a sec, that’s the wrong way round.’ Isn’t the passage ‘ they shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks.’ Not in Joel. Joel reverses the image. It’s Isaiah and Micah that take the words Joel uses and make them peaceful. And I found myself thinking how often we do that? Think we know a passage, read it for the umpteenth time, and something different pops out at us. And if I’m honest it’s not just in our Bible readings either. God is very good at taking what we think we know and turning upside down. So the words of Jesus come to mind. The first will be last, the last first. The weak shall be made strong and the strong made weak. That sort of th...

Joel 2:13 Rend your heart,     and not your garments; return to the Lord your God,     for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love;     and He relents from punishing. Thought for the day – Evidence that demand a verdict Firstly, apologies for nicking the title of a well-known book by Josh McDowell for the title of today’s thought. But I think today’s verse is asking us a really important question about how to demonstrate that we are repenting from the sin God has highlighted in our lives. God asks the people through Joel, to tear their hearts not their clothes.  And it got me thinking about how many people say the sinners prayer, give Jesus their hearts and then carry on like nothing has ever happened. And I find myself asking the question what would I need to see that would show me someone was truly repentant and wanted to follow Jesus? What evidence can I see that demands me to make a verdict about the chan...

Joel 1:4 What the fledging locust left,     the adult locust has eaten; what the adult locust left,     the larval locust has eaten; what the larval locust left,     the hopper locust has eaten. Thought for the day – Locusts When I was a kid, probably about 11 or 12, we were living in a very rural part of South Africa. I remember waking up one morning to this incredible buzzing sound. A swarm of locusts had enveloped the little town we were in. And by the morning, they had stripped every green thing of its leaves and its flowers. There were tens of thousands of these giant hopping Black and yellow locusts that just devoured everything. It was scary. If it was a problem then, it's still a problem today. So much so that in 1986, the Senegalese government sprayed 1,000,000 acres of land with pesticide to kill off the locusts in the area. One square foot of land can contain up to 1000 newly hatched locusts. And a single locust c...

  Hosea 14:9 Whoever is wise, let him understand these things;     whoever prudent, let him know them. For the ways of the Lord are right,     and the just will walk in them;     but the transgressors stumble in them.   Thought for the day – The same road I love walking. But there's something I noticed on every single walk that I go on. I might enjoy the walk but the path that I'm walking on doesn't care about me. It's the same puddles, the same slopes, same stones. So, I walk along it not thinking about it and the next thing I've either stepped in a puddle, or I've turned my ankle over on a stone. And the reason why I'm talking about paths not caring and me walking on them is that because actually as we read Hosea's last chapter today and the very last words of Hosea, that's what we're dealing with, we're dealing with the ways of the Lord. And irrespective how we feel about them, the ways of the Lord are right. T...

  Hosea 13:14 I will ransom them from the power of Sheol. I will redeem them from death. Death, where are your barbs? Sheol, where is your sting? Compassion is hidden from my eyes.   Thought for the day – What God wants of us I’ve been reading a book called 4000 weeks. Any guesses to what it might mean? Well, it’s the number of weeks we have to live if we live to 77 years old. The book is about realising that we only have a finite time on this earth and that trying to micromanage our time is futile because to paraphrase the philosopher Heidigger, because we are temporal and corporeal, we are time.   It’s a challenging read because as a Christian, I firmly believe in the concept of life after death and that we as followers of Jesus have nothing to fear when we die, because of Jesus and because he will bring us through death to see the face and the glory of God. Our verse today is echoed by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 as he talks about how Christ has overco...

  Hosea 12:6 But you must return to your God. Maintain love and justice, and always put your hope in God.   Thought for the day – What God wants of us There is a wonderful image that has been created that shows the links between different Bible verses. Created by Chris Harrison and Pastor Christoph Romhild, it links every cross reference in the Bible. All 63779 of them. That’s a lot of cross references, but the one that stood out for me from today’s chapter was how similar today’s verse was to Michah 6:8 ‘Mankind, he has told each of you what is good and what it is the Lord requires of you: to act justly, to love faithfulness, and to walk humbly with your God.’ If we believe that God speaks to us through Scripture then to hear the same message a number of times, probably means we should pay attention. So what is God saying to us here. Firstly in the context of Hosea, it’s a message of how far they had slipped from how God wanted them to behave. This is what Micah...

  Hosea 11:3 It was I who taught Ephraim to walk, taking them by the hand, but they never knew that I healed them.   Thought for the day – Father heart of God. Hosea is a hard book to read. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, it’s hard. But as Biblical scholar Derek Kidner puts it Hosea ‘is one of the boldest … in exposing us to the mind and heart of God in human terms.’ And we see that in today’s chapter. We see God as a father teaching his children to walk, taking them by the hand as they grow up and then watching them walk away from him and forgetting who he was and what he had done for them. It is a heart-breaking image. And in our chapter today we see a tension between the image of God who is Almighty and image of a God who loves us like a gentle father. And if I’m honest, I’m not quite sure where to go with that. Maybe it’s one of the images we are just encouraged to sit with and wonder about. That’s not a cop out because it’s something we all struggle...

Hosea 10:12 Sow for yourselves righteousness;     reap steadfast love;     break up your fallow ground, for it is time to seek the Lord,     that he may come and rain righteousness upon you.   Thought for the day – What God wants We used to live in Kent and across the road from our estate was an open field that lay fallow for a large part of the time we were there. It was peaceful and easy to walk on. And fallow ground feels restful, even a bit virtuous. Nothing's wrong, nothing's growing, nothing needs fixing. Almost sounds like some of our churches.   But that is not an image Hosea presents. Fallow ground isn't peaceful or restful ground, here it's hardened ground. It's the heart that has stopped expecting anything. And the prophet's word is blunt: break it up. Get the plough out. It's time. And ploughing is difficult. Ploughing tears things up and breaks things down. Nobody breaks up hard soil gently.   John Wesley was well ...

Hosea 9:14 Give them, O Lord—     what will you give? Give them a miscarrying womb     and dry breasts.   Thought for the day – Barren Womb, Open Hands Today’s thought is a Deb takeover As a woman, as a mother this passage is a hard read. I remember, a few years after we had adopted my ex-sister-in-law gave me a very belated adoption congratulations card, and the only words she had written in it were the words from this verse. At the time I was furious. So furious that I ripped the card up. Because to be reminded that as a woman my body had failed me, even though we had children through adoption was more painful than I can put into words. I guess, contextually, the inability to have children way back when Hosea was writing was more significant than now, when women aren’t tied to being a mother and housewife. But it is still significant. Significant because family relationships today are still complicated - both joyful and hurtful. I...

 Hosea 8:7 For they sow the wind,     and they shall reap the whirlwind. The standing grain has no heads;     it shall yield no meal; if it were to yield,     foreigners would devour it. Thought for the day – Reaping the whirlwind Yesterday we talked about how we all have some sort of oppositional defiance disorder. It’s called sin and the root of our spiritual ODD is our rebellion against God both in the Garden of Eden at the beginning and our ongoing rebellion is our sinful natures. And like all rebellions there are consequences. We sow the seeds and then wonder why we reap the whirlwind.  It’s almost as if we are too blind or unwilling to see the consequences of our actions. So, for instance, the church pastor that gets a little too close to their PA; or the Christian business owner that doesn’t keep to all the legislation; The church goer who is an absolute saint on Sunday but abuses their spouse during the week. All of these have consequences...