The Celebration God Wants

"I hate your worship!" God said through the prophet Amos. But the worship itself wasn't the problem. It was everything else. The way people lived the other six days of the week, exploiting the poor. The godless and greedy society they had created and materially benefited from. Sunday’s reading from Amos catches God at the very moment of losing patience. God’s message is simple: Show me you love me by doing right by the poor. Flood your society with justice. Make your generosity as constant as a river. Giving that stops at our own walls and borders is like a river that runs dry before it reaches the ocean. So Zion’s generosity flows out into the neighborhood and indeed whole world!

When you give money to the church, you have less money. That's just math. But lives are permanently changed for the better. Entitlement and resentment spread like a plague, carried by the world’s advice: "Get all you can. Can what you get. Then sit on your can." That road ends in theft and violence. Death, not life. The cures are gratitude and generosity: trusting God enough to open our hands, both to give and to receive.

Thank you. Thank you for praying over your Estimate of Giving these past weeks, for asking honestly what God is calling you to do with what you’ve been given, and for choosing to invest in the ministries of Zion. That is what growing in faith to reach out in love looks like. Bring your card this Sunday, or submit it online, and let’s celebrate together.

Thanks be to God.

Pastor Clark Olson-Smith