Amos 5:18-20

“Alas for you who desire the day of the Lord! Why do you want the day of the Lord? It is darkness, not light; as if someone fled from a lion, and was met by a bear;” vss. 18-19a

It’s amazing how the church calendar works. We’ve just gotten by Halloween and are setting our sights on Thanksgiving, when out-of-the-blue Amos shows up for a visit. Amos was a prophet in Israel at a time of great prosperity and enormous corruption, and signs of decay could be seen everywhere. And now he gets to visit with us on the eve of our national elections. We’ve had weeks of vitriolic political ads on television and on social media and non-stop campaigning in virtually every state. Billions of dollars have been spent to promote the election of favored candidates.

And now many are looking forward to tomorrow, hoping against hope that their choices will be vindicated. But the problem is that the election itself will do nothing to remove the corruption and lust for power and money. If anything those desires will only be intensified. And it could even be, as Amos believed, that the new day would bring darkness and not light. Today we really don’t know!

But believers still have an ace up their sleeves. They know that the Lord is the ruler of the heavens and the earth, and that in Christ all things will be made right. Their hope is built on nothing less! On Wednesday the sun will rise again–and perhaps we’ll even see the Light.

Thought for the Day: What difference will this election make?