I am blessed to be overloaded with Thanksgiving leftovers. What I don’t give away, I likely will bring to work so it doesn’t spoil and so I don’t eat too much pie… Overloaded is what we eat, and what we have, sometimes, and we SHOULD SHARE Then at other times, we have not enough, and oh so sad there are many that have much less, losing also hope. May we share where we can. Share our harvest gifts, including sharing the HOPE especially with Word of the Lord and His Promises fulfilled and still to come. May we share the fruits of the Spirit as well: Love, Peace, Joy, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, and Self Control.

Enjoying Thanksgiving, I was so comforted in hearing the prayer of Linus during the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving cartoon, who gave an account of the first Thanksgiving and the prayer that day: “Elder William Brewster, who was a minister, said a prayer that went something like this: ‘We thank God for our homes and our food and our safety in a new land. We thank God for the opportunity to create a new world for freedom and justice'”.

As I return to my Old Testament reading and writing in Amos closing up the chapters, the Lord was telling Amos to tell people to practice justice and to shape up! The Lord saw false idol worship and really bad cheating of the poor, falsifying the balances by deceit. Remember that the Lord Jesus came to the temple courts and overturned the money exchange and selling market cheating the poor. The poor were supposed to be allowed to buy inexpensive items for required sacrifice. Cheating of those with little was rampant. God NEVER likes to see people ignoring His command to share, to be fair, and to be aware.

On Thanksgiving, it’s a reminder to appreciate what we have and surely others have shared with us, like those American Indians helped the settlement survive. Farmers know the land.

Amos is a fig tree farmer called to be a prophet during the wayward times Israelites and Judah-ites who are in a divided kingdom. Amos gives the Lord’s warning and judgment on the cheating. With a tough-love approach, the Lord said: “I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord” – WOW! 

But here is the HOPE – Amos tells of a RESTORATION of the House of David – now there’s a great segue into Christmas – that the Hope is in the Lord to raise up the remnant of the fallen. To start a fresh seeding of the land: “Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that the plowman shall overtake the reaper...”

So as we close this month of November, may we continue Thanksgiving with our hearts and actions (and some leftovers). May we especially thank God for the blessed Hope He planted in the days before our lives, all while planting and planning for us to know Him and His goodness. May we use our fruits of the spirit to keep showing others how we trust the Lord. Bear fruit for Him.

May we always be thankful. 

Amen

—

Amos 8

Thus hath the Lord God shewed unto me: and behold a basket of summer fruit. And he said, Amos, what seest thou? And I said, A basket of summer fruit. Then said the Lord unto me, The end is come upon my people of Israel; I will not again pass by them any more. And the songs of the temple shall be howlings in that day, saith the Lord God: there shall be many dead bodies in every place; they shall cast them forth with silence.

Hear this, O ye that swallow up the needy, even to make the poor of the land to fail, saying, When will the new moon be gone, that we may sell corn? and the sabbath, that we may set forth wheat, making the ephah small, and the shekel great, and falsifying the balances by deceit That we may buy the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes; yea, and sell the refuse of the wheat?

The Lord hath sworn by the excellency of Jacob, Surely I will never forget any of their works.

Shall not the land tremble for this, and every one mourn that dwelleth therein? and it shall rise up wholly as a flood; and it shall be cast out and drowned, as by the flood of Egypt.

And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord God, that I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in the clear day: And I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation; and I will bring up sackcloth upon all loins, and baldness upon every head; and I will make it as the mourning of an only son, and the end thereof as a bitter day. Behold, the days come, saith the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord: And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the Lord, and shall not find it.

In that day shall the fair virgins and young men faint for thirst. They that swear by the sin of Samaria, and say, Thy god, O Dan, liveth; and, The manner of Beersheba liveth; even they shall fall, and never rise up again.

Amos 9

I saw the Lord standing upon the altar: and he said, Smite the lintel of the door, that the posts may shake: and cut them in the head, all of them; and I will slay the last of them with the sword: he that fleeth of them shall not flee away, and he that escapeth of them shall not be delivered.

Though they dig into hell, thence shall mine hand take them; though they climb up to heaven, thence will I bring them down: And though they hide themselves in the top of Carmel, I will search and take them out thence; and though they be hid from my sight in the bottom of the sea, thence will I command the serpent, and he shall bite them:

And though they go into captivity before their enemies, thence will I command the sword, and it shall slay them: and I will set mine eyes upon them for evil, and not for good. And the Lord God of hosts is he that toucheth the land, and it shall melt, and all that dwell therein shall mourn: and it shall rise up wholly like a flood; and shall be drowned, as by the flood of Egypt.

It is he that buildeth his stories in the heaven, and hath founded his troop in the earth; he that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth: The Lord is his name. Are ye not as children of the Ethiopians unto me, O children of Israel? saith the Lord. Have not I brought up Israel out of the land of Egypt? and the Philistines from Caphtor, and the Syrians from Kir? 

Behold, the eyes of the Lord God are upon the sinful kingdom, and I will destroy it from off the face of the earth; saving that I will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob, saith the Lord.

For, lo, I will command, and I will sift the house of Israel among all nations, like as corn is sifted in a sieve, yet shall not the least grain fall upon the earth. All the sinners of my people shall die by the sword, which say, The evil shall not overtake nor prevent us.

In that day will I raise up the tabernacle of David that is fallen, and close up the breaches thereof; and I will raise up his ruins, and I will build it as in the days of old: That they may possess the remnant of Edom, and of all the heathen, which are called by my name, saith the Lord that doeth this.

Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that the plowman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him that soweth seed; and the mountains shall drop sweet wine, and all the hills shall melt.

And I will bring again the captivity of my people of Israel, and they shall build the waste cities, and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and drink the wine thereof; they shall also make gardens, and eat the fruit of them.

And I will plant them upon their land, and they shall no more be pulled up out of their land which I have given them, saith the Lord thy God.