Tuesday
Read Amos 8:1-12
I had another vision from the Sovereign Lord. In it I saw a basket of fruit. 2The
Lord asked, “Amos, what do you
see?”
“A basket of fruit,” I answered.
The Lord
said to me, “The endi has come for my people Israel. I will not
change my mind again about punishing them. 3On that day the songs in
the palace will become cries of mourning. There will be dead bodies everywhere.
They will be thrown out in silence.”j
4 Listen to this, you that trample
on the needy and try to destroy the poor of the country. 5You say to
yourselves, “We can hardly wait for the holy days to be over so that we can
sell our corn. When will the Sabbath end, so that we can start selling again?
Then we can overcharge, use false measures, and tamper with the scales to cheat
our customers. 6We can sell worthless wheat at a high price. We’ll
find a poor person who can’t pay his debts, not even the price of a pair of
sandals, and we’ll buy him as a slave.”
7 The Lord, the God of Israel, has sworn, “I will never forget
their evil deeds. 8And so the earth will quake, and everyone in the
land will be in distress. The whole country will be shaken; it will rise and
fall like the River Nile. 9The time is coming when I will make the
sun go down at noon and the earth grow dark in daytime. I, the Sovereign Lord, have spoken. 10I will
turn your festivals into funerals and change your glad songs into cries of
grief. I will make you shave your heads and wear sackcloth, and you will be
like parents mourning for their only child. That day will be bitter to the end.
11 “The time is coming when I will
send famine on the land. People will be hungry, but not for bread; they will be
thirsty, but not for water. They will hunger and thirst for a message from the Lord. I, the Sovereign Lord, have spoken. 12People
will wander from the Dead Sea to the Mediterranean and then on from the north
to the east. They will look everywhere for a message from the Lord, but they will not find it.
Think
Amos receives several harsh visions of judgment. This particular vision condemns the economic
and business practices of the Israelites: "You trample on the needy and
try to destroy the poor..."
God is interested in the way we do business.
Pray
Lord help me to do what is right in your eyes in the management of my
business. Lord we pray for justice in
the economy of our country.
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