Bring Back Justice

You say that God is with you, so you should do good things, not evil. Then you will live, and the Lord God All-Powerful will be with you. Hate evil and love goodness. Bring justice back into the courts. Maybe then the Lord God All-Powerful will be kind to the survivors from Joseph’s family. (Amos 5:14-15, Easy-to-Read Version)

I had a different Bible passage picked out for today; in fact, it was an entire chapter from the book of Psalms. Psalms has a lot of beautiful and moving verses. But what about the book of Amos? We never hear much about the prophet Amos or the book he penned.  

Seventeen books of the Old Testament are written by men considered the “prophets”. Most of these books are painful to read in their entirety. You need to know and understand much of the history of the Jewish people for these books to make sense to you. I would love to delve into them, but it can make my head spin.

So, we pluck out a few verses that sound good. We may not know what the words mean from the perspective of the ancient Jews, but we use what we can. Doesn’t it make sense to us all to “hate evil and love goodness”?

And sometimes, sentences such as “bring justice back into the courts” are so fitting to this time period that we have to believe that the word of God is as prevalent today as it was millennia ago.