Let the River Flow

You who turn justice into biterness and cast righteousness to the ground...you trample on the poor and force him to give you grain. Therefore, though you have built stone mansions, you will not live in them; though you have planted lush vineyards, you will not drink their wine. For I know how many are your offenses and how great your sins. You oppress the righteous and take bribes and you drprive the poor of justice in the courts. Threfore the prudent man keeps quiet in such times,for the times are evil.
Seek good, not evil, that you may live. Then the Lord God Almighty will be with you, just as you say he is. Hate evil, love good, maintain justice in the courts. Perhaps the Lord God Almighty will have mercy on the remnant of Joseph.

I hate, I despise your religious feasts. I (cannot stand your assemblies. Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. Though you bring choice fellowship offerings, I will have no regard for them. Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps.

But let justice roll on like a mighty river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!

Let the poor man say I am rich in Him...
Let the dead man say I'm alive in Him...

and let the river flow.

I've sung that song many times, but I've never listened to it with an ounce of understanding. But tonight I stood in a church for a recovery meeting and sang these words with a few friends who ARE poor and a couple who have lived feeling like walking dead. But the richness of this song (and as my mind linked to) these verses in Amos is beyond compare. I've been missing it, but tonight everything came together.

The book of Amos is responsible in large part for my being here at Rising Hope this summer. I find such beauty in the prophets, and especially in this one. They deliver power-laden roundhouse kicks to my jaw and leave me broken before the will of God, yet I find myself smiling as I spit out my teeth. I am happy to be without them if they are the cost of being drawn closer to God.

I didn't walk into Amos with the intent of being reshaped. All I wanted was to get a paper done for my Prophets class and Amos was a short book with a very clear viewpoint and style of rhetoric. I approached the book apathetically, hoping to quickly move through it, analyze it, and leave it.

Not surprisingly, things did not go as I had intended. Instead of chewing up this book and regurgitating it to my professor, Amos chewed me up and regurgitated me at God's feet. In the prophet's descriptions of indulgent Israel I saw a mirror image of myself and my people in all our grotesque habits and ignorance. I saw God looking at me, my church, my friends, and saying "I don't want your songs and your pianos and your skits. I want my people and my friends to be taken care of and brought in, and then we will all worship in fullness together. Until you do that for me, guys...something's always gonna be missing." So I said, forget my other options for this summer. I'm going with GBGM. I'm going to take this opportunity and find what I'm missing.

I found it.

I found people who really need God instead of just including him as a sort of spiritual life insurance policy.
I found people who mean the words they sing on Sundays and Thursdays, because in most instances they are unable to meet their needs--only God can.
And being with them, I see now that I am looking into another mirror, and I am seeing myself again. I have been awakened to my own deep, hungry, desperate need for God. I have started to really mean the words I'm singing and to really hear what the words are saying. What was it the scripture said?
"Seek good, not evil, that you may live. Perhaps then the Lord God Almighty will be with you just as you say he is."
Seeking good involves the good of all. It's connecting with others, caring about them and for them. Yet often when I seek good, I assume I am doing it for their sake. But I
was
wrong.

Seeking good for others is for my sake. It's so I might live. It's so I might figure out that I need, too. It's so I might find God where God has always preferred to dwell--in the margins, with the people that no one but Him will claim.

And suddenly in those connections and in that caring, God appears. Amos says seek justice, good, kindness---maybe then God will actually be as present as you say he is.

Dripping with sarcasm.* Just how I like it.
Let justice flow, you fools, and of course God will be there.
Make things right, you fools, and of course God will dwell among you. He'll finally be able to! Love knows love. Love lives where love lives. A just God will live where there is justice...

why did I not get this until now?



(*denotes that this is how I perceive the verse in my mind. If you have utter knowledge as to why this verse isn't sarcastic...you're right, I'm wrong. K?)

P.S. I seem to have lost the ability to write coherently for any span of time. I hate this about myself and apologize for those of you suffering and trying to comprehend this. However, I know that in order to get anywhere I have to turn the internal editor OFF and just come back to these things later to better them. So, yeah, sorry for now.