AMOS 8:1-3 HARVEST TIME

1 This is what the Sovereign LORD showed me: a basket of ripe fruit. 2 “What do you see, Amos?” he asked. “A basket of ripe fruit,” I answered. Then the LORD said to me, “The time is ripe for my people Israel; I will spare them no longer.
3 “In that day,” declares the Sovereign LORD, “the songs in the temple will turn to wailing. Many, many bodies—flung everywhere! Silence!”

When one goes to the produce section in a grocery store, he usually finds two classes of tomatoes. The labeling identifies the tomatoes in the bin before you as “vine-ripened” or just “tomatoes.” These categories have been developed due to the practice of picking tomatoes while they are still green, loading them into trailers, pumping certain gases into the trailer that will turn the tomatoes red while in transit, and then selling them in the market. While these may slice better and be firmer than those that ripen naturally, they have significantly less taste. A gourmet cook would never mistake a trailer-ripened for a vine-ripened tomato.

God’s eye is infinitely more discerning than any earthly gourmet. He knows truly ripe fruit from fruit that merely looks ripe. In comparison to ripe fruit, Israel looked ripe but was really rotten. They had severed their relationship with the vine before God’s ordained time and became enamored about how good they looked in the world.

Once the fruit is off the vine there is no longer any way it can be fed and all growth ceases. Without that nourishing connection the fruit is as good as dead and its only future is decay. That was the fate of Israel; stagnation and decay. Having cut off their connection with God they were no longer receiving God’s word. So when their own voices were stilled, nothing remained but silence.

As the Church and as members of the Church, we have the responsibility to stay connected to God and not become fruit in a basket. Our connection is through his word. We stay connected by learning his word as it has been delivered to us in the Bible, living his word through obedience to Christ and proclaiming his word in all we do. By so doing, we will never experience spiritual rot nor divine silence.

Father, you are the source of all life and growth and health. Bless me with a community of believers who will stay connected and encourage me to remain connected to your life-sustaining word. Protect me from the lure of the culture that purrs of my need to be independent and distracts me from your precepts. Make me ever aware of my need to live by your word. Amen.