As I sit looking out of my window, I am looking at a very muddy ‘mossy’ lawn and it all feels
a bit of a mess and I am wondering where to begin in getting it to looking like a garden I feel
joy from and it has reminded me of the glimmer of hope that is found in Amos which I have
been reading for the last couple of weeks through Morning Prayer.
It hasn’t really very cheery reading. Once again, the people have deserted God, and Amos
tells us that God seems, by turns to be just and merciful, but also furious and wrathful; that
he is bent on harsh punishment and yet is willing to change his mind. Amos is a prophet
that wants to the people to understand that to follow God justice and religious action are
one thing, that to know God and be in relationship with God will mean that you will do
good. Yet, the people turn from God, they fail to understand the significance of this
relationship and seemingly do not want to have a relationship with Him or to obey His
commands, and so Amos tells us God is angry ready to abandon His people. And even
when bad things have happened, they do not see it as a wake-up call to return to God and
change their behaviours, they continue in religious practice but did not reduce the
oppression and injustice to the poor and the weak. They didn’t understand that for things
to go right, that for creation and its people to be redeemed a right relationship with God is
necessary.
Amos could see that his people were on the verge of bringing disaster on themselves. The
solution had to be found in the people changing their attitudes and understanding towards
God rather than asking God to avert punishment. By chapter 8 Amos has had enough, he
has pleaded he has warned, but the people are not interested. And so he turns to God who
says that everything is over and that he will not return, that death and destruction will
follow. Bad things are going to happen.
And then Chapter 9, God offers a glimmer of hope.
Hope that things can be restored. That it is not just a
matter of starting totally afresh, but that God will
repair, rebuild, recreate. There will be a reckoning,
but God will not obliterate everything. Rather He will
use what is good. He will not reject everything but
will build from the ruins. I find this so hopeful,
because when things are bad or difficult, we may want to run away and totally start again.
We may even feel that about ourselves, that we cannot forgive what we have done. Can’t
believe that God loves us totally despite these things. But the amazing thing is that He
does. And as we seek Him, He will rebuild up, using the bits of us that we may thing are
useless, but actually can be used as cornerstones for something new and amazing.
So how does this all reflect on my garden?!? Well very tenuously, I see that there are
barebones that can be used to make something lovely. I do not need to start from scratch,
there are things I might move around, and plants I can introduce, and perhaps with a bit of
feeding and additional grass seed, I might get something of a green lawn!
“I will raise up…Repair its
breaches and raise up its ruins
and rebuild…I will restore.”
Amos 9: 13-14
