That Day Has Come

“The days are coming,” declared the Sovereign Lord,

when I will send a famine through the land–

not a famine of food or a thirst for water,

but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord.

Men will stagger from sea to sea

and wander from north to east,

searching for the word of the Lord,

but they will not find it.

In that day the lovely young women and strong young men

will faint because of thirst.

They who swear by the shame of Samaria,

or say ‘As surely as your god lives, O Dan,’

or, ‘As surely as the god of Beersheba lives’–

they will fall, never to rise again.”

–Amos 8:11-14, NIV.

Some people recognize the signs. The famine has come upon us. The land lies dry, whirligigs of dust swirling around. We waited too long to make our course correction, to pull out the weeds of human philosophy and worldly wisdom and to put our roots down into His riverbed where we could draw from the water of life. The weeds have choked the grain. And the God who let us choose between His Word and our own, has sent the famine. Now we are hard put to find God’s Truth among that which is a poor imitation of it.

We are shoppers, picking and choosing what suits us, and when it suits us. The delicate, yet durable, fruit of His grace and wisdom lies in storage. It wasn’t selling, it didn’t seem marketable, so we moved it to the back, within reach if necessary, but out of view so that the consuming public would see what they wanted and not be scared off by what they needed and didn’t particularly like.

Empty calories. That’s what consumers like.

Fibre? I don’t think so.

So the famine has come upon us and while we older ones still cling to what we still can dimly remember, and cultivate our own personal gardens as best we can, we are conscious of the dryness. People dig wells that soon run dry, planting and cultivate crops that don’t satisfy. And who is suffering the most? Who will suffer?

This coming generation of adults, those who are youth and children today, will bear the consequences of our failure to feed them what they really need. Did we ever consider that we might be “killing them with kindness” by providing the best of the world for them, while playing down God’s best for them? It seems like God’s message to Amos was just that. This generation and the one to come will “faint because of thirst…they will fall, never to rise again.” And where will the responsibility for that fall?

They will bear the consequences for the spiritual ignorance we encouraged.

And as in the days of Amos, so will we.