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When we read the Bible, there are many verses that we accept willingly, even
exuberantly: the gift of eternal life in John 3:16; the idea that God works all things
together for the good of those who love Him found in Romans 8:28; Mark 9’s
“Everything is possible for one who believes.” These verses are easy to embrace. We
memorize them and store them in our hearts for the tough moments when we need to
remember the goodness of God.
What happens then when we come across statements in God’s Word that are not so
easily embraced? When reading the book of Amos, we are forced into confronting what
our idea of ‘good’ looks like. Perhaps it’s not all rainbows and sunshine. Could there be
purpose in the darkness and storms of our lives?
Amos 3:6 reads, “Does disaster come to a city unless the Lord has planned it?” Initially
we might think, “Of course, God is sovereign over all things.” Then we realize what
we’ve just conceded to and pause. Our automatic agreement wanes into an internal
conversation:
Wait! Disaster?
Okay, let’s think about this. The Lord planned disaster, so it must be for our
enemies. Yes, God can ordain disaster to punish those who stand against His
people.
Right? But this disaster was coming to Israel, His children.
If God would send disaster to His children and I’m a child of God, could disaster
come to me too? Could God truly have planned it?
And how do I bravely navigate such a thing?

Amos’s Choice

Amos, a minor prophet, lived in the times when the Promised Land was divided. The
northern portion was called Israel and currently ruled by Jeroboam II and the southern
portion was Judah. Judah is where God found Amos living a quiet life of shepherding
and tending fig trees. God gave him visions and words that Amos was to deliver to the
people of Israel. This would not have been a very enticing invitation. Let’s just say
there’s a reason that the kingdom was separated. And to quote Amos “Can two people

walk together without agreeing on the direction?” (Amos 3:3). Israel and Judah were
definitely NOT walking in the same direction and agreed on very little.
So, Amos was doing his thing, surrounded by his sheep and figs when God showed up.
Then Amos had to choose. Was he going to keep doing his thing or change paths?
Would he embrace the interruption and follow where God was leading him? I’m sure this
was not in his 5-year plan. It probably wasn’t on Amos’s radar of possibilities for his life.
Isn’t that how God tends to work though? We are plugging along doing our thing when
He steps in and invites us to change course. We get to choose. We can keep to our
original path or accept the new way.
Amos chose to follow God. This did not bring confetti cannons. This did not rocket him
into popularity. This did not fill his storehouses with riches. This meant he left his home
and traveled to a place where no one wanted him around to tell people things they didn’t
want to hear. You see the people of Israel were doing their thing too. They had a plan.
They were waiting on the Day of the Lord! God was going to intervene on their behalf.
He was going to swoop in and save the day. And He was going to step in and make
some changes, but not like they thought.

God’s Plan

It’s true that the people surrounding Israel and Judah were doing some bad things and
God did intend to deal with them. Amos opened with this prophecy. (Perhaps God knew
he needed something to grab the Israelites’ attention before He shared more of what
was really on His heart.) However, Amos carried a message that God was more
focused on saving Israel from themselves than from their enemies. You see, the things
they had chosen to do had led them far from Him. They had found some comfort, some
wealth, and some religion. They went through the motions of worship, but their hearts
were disengaged. How could God know this? Well, He, of course, could look into their
hearts, but their actions also proved the conditions of their hearts, as they always do.
Israelites were treating people badly. They weren’t helping those that needed help. In
fact, they weren’t even noticing.
But God did. And because He loved them, he had to do something.
So, God sent Amos to tell them about it. Amos told them that God was going to
intervene, but that they weren’t going to like it. They needed discipline and God was
getting ready to dish it out. Dark times were ahead. Pain and suffering would be
inflicted. Destruction of their whole way of life was headed their way. All of this because
they had chosen to go their own way instead of God’s. Here we find ourselves back
where we started in Amos 3:6: “Does disaster come to a city unless the Lord has
planned it?”

God was planning disaster to come to an Israelite city. This city held His children. Those
He loved beyond measure. We can look at this as cruel punishment, but we’d be
missing something: the character of God. God is love. His desire is for His people to
live. Amos 5:6 tells us how to do that: “Seek the Lord and live.” The truth is God loved
His people too much to let them continue down this road that led them further and
further away from Him. He had tried other ways to get their attention and invited them to
return to Him. They failed to listen and change course. That was their choice.

Our Choice

Sometimes we fail to listen as well. We fail to change course at the interruption and
invitation of God to do so. And sometimes people we love choose to keep doing their
thing even when God has prompted us, like Amos, to point them to truth and life.
I don’t know exactly how Amos dealt with that. He did what God called him to do. He
spoke the very words God gave him to speak. He traveled into unfamiliar and possibly
hostile places to bravely share truth. And maybe it was easier to speak to strangers.
These were people that God loved dearly, but Amos didn’t really know. What if the
people we’re called to share visions and words with are those we share a home with
every day?
God called me to adopt, to take some of those strangers and bring them into my home
and love them like He did. I embraced that interruption and followed His lead. Some
people think that adoption is simply generous and beautiful, but I think those people
haven’t actually adopted. There is grace and beauty, but trauma is commonplace in the
land of adoption. Rejection and hostility find their way into the home in which you hoped
love could be enough. The children in my care had no say in what happened to them in
the first years of their lives. They didn’t choose for traumatic experiences to override
God’s plan for their brain development. Yet, the possibility remains to move toward
healing even though it requires loads of hard work. God’s invitation still stands; anyone
can return to Him. He calls to each of us, “Seek me, and live.” (Amos 5:4)

My Idea of Love

When I was little, I played with dolls and dreamed of being a mom. My journey to
motherhood was long and arduous, perhaps preparing me for what lay ahead. I
imagined a world in which love felt like a pit of Squishmallows. I would jump in, and it
would envelop me with cushy softness. However, as I stepped into parenting, I quickly
realized that was not the case. It was more like a ninja course, and it required sure

footing and constant vigilance. I had to be firmly standing on the cornerstone of Christ
because life would be full of unexpected storms. It also required armor to bravely step
into another person’s hurt and speak truth and life. There are moments of Squishmallow
bliss, but parenting often feels more like hugging a sea urchin. Love can cause
callouses and wounds, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth it. And it doesn’t mean you
give up. Love means trying again and again and making hard choices in the face of
seemingly insurmountable challenges.
I also don’t know how God felt when he chose to make hard choices that effected His
children. He loved Israel. I know that. He also chose to make hard calls when others
suffered at their hands. I can relate to that. When children in my home chose to inflict
pain on others, it broke my heart. When they entertained homicidal ideations, the
danger was real. Something had to change; hard calls had to be made. Those included
emergency room visits, psychiatric inpatient stays, partial programs, residential
treatment facilities, and group homes. Extremely hard calls, especially when you love
your kid. Yet, there were other children in the home; I loved them too. Their lives
mattered, just like the poor being oppressed in Israel at the time of Amos. God loved
them too.

God’s Idea of Love

Just like God would go to extreme lengths to win back the heart of His children, He
would do the same for mine. That included planning some disasters. Always at the root
of such awful circumstances is His goodness. He will use whatever means necessary to
reach our hearts, to turn us away from death and back to life with Him.
Now, admittedly, I’m not God and I haven’t always make perfect decisions. I do my best
to bravely navigate the disasters that God plans. I do have peace about following God
through unimaginable horrors. I also find comfort in the fact that God shows love
through discipline and making hard calls for His own children. All of my children are
alive today, even though there were some days I wasn’t sure that would be the case.
They don’t all live with me, but some do. There are years of trauma that occurred in our
home. Some of which I may never know, because even after years of feeling safe there
are still things coming to light. I do know that we all have the choice to return to God and
move toward healing. And it’s up to us to make that choice.
In Amos 5, God describes to His children how to return to Him and find life. He speaks
of great sorrow at how they have treated their fellow human beings and especially their
pretense and hypocrisy of religion (vs. 21-23). God doesn’t want them going through the
motions, He desires their hearts. “Instead, I want to see a mighty flood of justice, and
endless river of righteous living. (vs. 24)” says God to all of us. For though we have to
make hard calls sometimes when it comes to those we love, we are all only able to

change our own hearts. That is truly brave. To recognize where we’ve veered off, to
seek the Lord and return to Him, this is where we discover how to truly live. That is our
choice: to embrace the interruption and correct our course.