In what looked like a slap to good oral hygiene, Amos pronounced a curse against the people of Israel:

I gave you cleanness of teeth in all your cities…

My grandmother, my mother, my wife, and scores of dental hygienists preached the value of clean teeth to me over the years. The sermons continue on a rigid, twice a year schedule. Happily converted, I now brush—and floss—daily, but I apparently still lack good technique. Always room to improve.

In the case of Amos’s audience, teeth stayed clean because they chewed on nothing. Amos, a shepherd and fig-picker, pronounced these devastating words during the reign of king Jeroboam. Israel refused to return to the Lord, and so God cut off both rain and harvest. But disaster after disaster failed to turn hearts away from their worship of devils and back to the Lord.

How to I respond to lousy circumstances? When I hear bad news at the dentist, I’m pretty sure I have no one to blame but myself. But when I face challenges due to circumstances beyond my control, like the ongoing hassles of the covid infestation, do I listen for the Lord, or just mutter my complaints and move on?

Amos speaks the antidote for Israel’s dire situation: For thus says the Lord to the house of Israel—Seek me and live.

Good advice. Whatever my circumstances, whatever my challenges, whatever my attitude toward them, the Lord’s message remains—Seek me and live.

Amos 4 & 5 in week thirty-one of reading the Bible cover to cover

Photo by Diana Polekhina