Death is not worse pain than an empty life. -- Lun Tha

I live under a slight contradiction, I confess.

Life is good.  I enjoy it.  Family, faith, friends. Doing the daily round with the occasional snorts of surprise tossed in for seasoning.  I have all I need, have much to look forward to, and there is little (aside from the "it's a rare woman that LIKES how she turns out in pictures" thing) that gives me cause for sighing, truly.

Yet, I am looking forward to it all being over, too. I am looking forward to a time when I will see my God and hear his words for me and am able to join the cast and crew of Eternity. With John the Apostle at the end of the book of Revelation, I can say, "Amen, come, Lord Jesus."

In between now and then, though, it's not going to be pretty. In between now and then will be downright terrible in many respects. Look at Google News.  North Korea's nuclear testing condemned. Oil market (thereby world fuel market) stressed. Tensions continue between Georgia and Russia. The chaos of US foreign policy goes nuclear.  US troops and Shiites battle. 

It's ugly. Everywhere.

Now, I am not in the least surprised, understand. Not at all. I know this is necessary. The world is a huge mess, worse, I believe, than it was before the time of Noah.  There is much good, too, that I can see. I read an article about the efforts (small, but every good thing is indeed a good) to aid the homeless camp children from Darfur.  They're innocent, stuck in a devastating situation, but people are trying, one child at a time, to bring health and healing. 

It's encouraging, but it will not be enough.

The Day of the Lord is approaching. 


I can hear the wailing, already, all over the world. 

I do long to see the Lord, yes. But I dread the coming of the Day of the Lord. Hence my contradiction.

Amos paints a frightening, vivid picture.  Unexpected scares.  An "out of the frying pan and into the fire" feel pervades this passage. 

When the Lord God passed through the Garden of Eden, before there was any sin in the world, his coming would have been peaceful.  His creations would have looked forward to his step, Adam and Eve might have dropped what they were doing, like happy children, to come to God's side, smiles in their eyes, for they had nothing to fear from God. 

But in the passage above, there will be wailing when God passes through the midst of people.  This word wailing strikes me, again, as it often does.  Mourners wail.  Their emotion is just too strong to be expressed by merely weeping.  Wailing encompasses screaming, weeping, sometimes overwrought movements of the body, too.  It is a huge outpouring of grief.

Such grief, the whole world will feel.  I do not believe anyone will be totally spared from this. I believe that this will be a world-wide time of mourning and fear. 

Do not be deceived in this.  I feel the need to say so.  Do not be deceived in thinking it won't happen or that it won't happen to you.  The prophets started calling out about it centuries upon centuries ago. Their words are still calling today.  Do not misunderstand what the Day of the Lord is. It will not be a time of rejoicing. It will not be the Great and Final Homecoming. It will not be a time where we sit down and rest after a job well done. It will be a time of fear. 

Why? Why will a great and loving God put his creation through this?  He says so, repeatedly. It is the same message he has been trying to get us to completely internalize since the days of Moses, at the very least: