Journey - April 30th, 21

Amos says God is sending a famine to the land, a famine, not of bread and water, but a famine of the ears, a famine of hearing the words of the Lord. People will stagger with hunger. He says, unable to find what they're looking for. Our ears are hungry, but we cannot hear what we must in order to be truly satisfied.

Sometimes we can have stomachs that are full, and yet still be dying of malnutrition. We simply are not eating what our bodies actually need. Amos is describing something like this here. We have fattened ourselves with the riches of this world. We have gained the whole world and yet we've starved our souls. What we often turn to in order to justify our indulgent lives, is religion, even the Bible.  The Pharisees did this, and Jesus calls him out for it. He said to them, you search the Scriptures because you think they give you life. But the Scriptures speak of me, and you would not come to me. They concocted the Bible to be something it was never meant to be. They worship the Bible, and their traditions around it. But what their hearts were truly starving for was God, the living word. And the good news is that God has come to us in Christ to offer himself as God's bread for our famished souls. God's water for our parched tongues. He is what we were truly made for. And no amount of religion or Bible study or doctrinal fidelity will satisfy our famished souls. Only him. So let us come to him today. The bread of life, our bread from heaven Amen.

You are loved!