Advent: Trust the Good

The American "public" is masterful at redirection. Individuals get swept up in the peripheral distractions and we accomplish nothing. After the latest mass shooting, complaints against the political tweets of "prayers for victims" exploded. People rightly complained to their political figures that prayer didn't take the place of responsible action.

So now the issue is not about gun safety, it is about the "criticism" of prayer. And lord knows the 80% of our population that never commit themselves to a regular discipline of faith practice in community don't want to be criticized for tweeting their prayers. (OK...that was snarky...but for today, snark stands.)

Take out the weird names and places in Amos, and it could have been written today. The people of God have lost their way, getting distracted by false gods and bad behaviors...forgetting their core identity and how they were called to live. For God, it is never about the prayers, it is always about the behaviors.

Amos is full of judgment and hopelessness...but things are never hopeless with God. Mixed into the judgment are sentences of hope. This passage is a good example.

Seek good and not evil, that you may live:
and so the LORD, the God of hosts, will be with you, just as you have said.
Hate evil and love good, and establish justice in the gate;
it may be that the LORD the God of hosts, will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph.

Plato understood "good" as an abstract concept, but that is not the Hebrew understanding. Nothing is abstract in the Hebrew world. Everything is lived, enacted. Good is a lived experience...and in God's world, good means good for all, not just for "me." Good doesn't stop with prayer (or sacrifice, if you live in the OT world). Good means doing justice, loving kindness, walking humbly with God.

Seek good. To do that, we have to trust that God's understanding of good is, indeed, what we need...who we should be. And then we have to work in that direction. Seek...

Watching for God to break into our world is not passive. God can do it alone, but God invites us to be part of the good...because our lives and the lives of our neighbors will be "good." Justice will prevail. Kindness will be the foundation on which we build our laws and our policies. And we will walk humbly with God...which means way more than a prayer tweet when the next tragedy happens.