Amos 5:14-15 (New International Version)
Seek good, not evil, that you may live. Then the Lord God Almighty will be with you, just as you say he is. Hate evil, love good; maintain justice in the courts. Perhaps the Lord God Almighty will have mercy on the remnant of Joseph.
When I was growing up, Americans referred to America as God’s Own Country. There were still people around who remembered the terrible Civil War—a war to banish the terrible evil of slavery. In those days many still believed that God had allowed (or sent) that war to punish Americans for allowing human bondage in God’s Own Country.
By the time I was old enough to remember anything, we had just won the war against Nazism, genocide, and destruction of freedom. America emerged the richest, most powerful nation on earth.
Since that time evil has crept back in. Or has it rushed in? Ideas like “God is dead” and concerted effort to destroy the family as well as the banning of even the mention of God in education and total denial of the devil—the source of all evil—to his great advantage, have gained strength. The sexual revolution, toleration of openly corrupt politicians, and voluntary destruction of over sixty million fetuses compound the negative effects.
The net result is the almost daily shootings in schools; global warming that ravages our environment; increased terror such as caused by the 9-11 attack; invasions, especially along the southern border of our country; embroilment in wars like Korea, Vietnam, Gulf, and Afghanistan, that have killed our young men by the thousands; increasingly vast expenditures on foreign wars.
O, America, we desperately need to search for good and reject evil before it is too late!
Truly we can borrow this prayer from Amos for our situation:
Seek good, not evil, that you may live. Then the Lord God Almighty will
be with you, just as you say he is. Hate evil, love good; maintain justice in
the courts. Perhaps the Lord God Almighty will have mercy on the remnant in
America!
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