In today's first reading, Amos 7: 10-17, the prophet Amos is rejected, asked to leave Bethel, "for it is the king's sanctuary and a royal temple." He is told that "the country cannot endure all his words." He is as unwelcome in Bethel as Jesus would later be in his own country. Amos answers Amaziah, the priest of Bethel by saying: "I was no prophet,...' I was a shepherd and a dresser of sycamores. The Lord took me from following the flock and said to me, 'Go, prophesy to my people Israel." Tell them the following: "Your wife shall be made a harlot in the city, and your sons and daughters shall fall by the sword; your land shall be divided...and you yourself shall die in an unclean land; Israel shall be exiled far from its land."
Who wants to hear the consequences that shall follow wrongdoing or that result from rejecting God's Covenant? Most times people do not want to hear the truth that there are consequences to making poor choices, to following the way of evil, of injustice and of violating people's rights! There will be consequences to separating children from their parents as well as to denying the path of citizenship to "Dreamers," children born here in the States or brought here at a young age, knowing no other home but here since childhood and now being adults. There will be consequences to destroying treaties that protected Mother Earth and pulling out of the climate agreement with our allies. There will be consequences to belittling our allies and refusing to work with them for the common good! There will be consequences to trade wars and whatever other ways are being used or considered "to create more billionaires"and "make America great again"!
Just as God called Amos from being a shepherd and a dresser of sycamores, so, too, does God call you and me from backgrounds others may frown upon! God calls the "weak" to confound the "strong." How and to what is God calling you?
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