“The days are coming,” declares the Sovereign Lord, “when I will send a famine through the land— not a famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord.” - Amos 8:11
The Lord God warns the people through the prophet Amos that their constant rejection of his messengers will mean that famine comes on the people. It’s going to be a famine even worse than a scarcity of food and water though, because it’s going to be a famine of the revelation of God himself. Nothing could be worse!
We may not know it, but the revelation of God to us is more important than our next mouthful of food. Food is for the body, but then the body is no more. But the soul of man never dies, and without God the soul is starved. Our souls must have their satisfaction, or spend eternity in anguish. And their satisfaction is in God alone. We were made for him.
So, we cannot afford to have a famine of the hearing of the words of the Lord. For some of us, the ten-week bible reading plan is coming to a close next week, which means that for ten weeks we have opened our ears every day to hear him speak to us and had our souls fed. What better way could we have spent those few precious moments that feasting our eyes on him?
But now is not the time to believe that famine is better than feasting. Having tasted good bounty, will we not have more? The new year represents a great opportunity to put in place new habits, and perhaps 2023 will be the year that some of you take the habit of a chapter of soul-food a day into a new year. Now is the time to plan for that – now is the time to make a holy ambition to hear God every day in 2023!
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