People will stagger from sea to sea and wander from north to east, searching for the word of the LORD, but they will not find it. – Amos 8:12

Today’s Scripture Reading (June 25, 2013): Amos 8

Black Sabbath released their latest studio album – 13 – earlier this month. The first single to be released from the Album is a song entitled “God is Dead?” 13 is the nineteenth studio album of the Band, and the it is the first time in thirty five years that Ozzy Osbourne has fronted the band for a studio album (although he has been present for various reunion concerts and fronted the album “Reunion” – a live compilation - in 1998.)  I have to admit that from the first rumor of the album and the title of the first single, I have been intrigued. What really caught my attention was the question mark at the end of the title of the single. There was a time when the question mark would not have been there – but times are changing. The title seems to simply ask a question – Is God really dead?

Amos prophesied of a time when the people of Israel would wander about asking the same question. They would search for word of the Lord and his activities, but they would not find him. And it is the same question that would ask – Is God dead? Has he abandoned us and left us to find our own way. But there is something different in the way that Amos phrases the search of the people for God. The search is from sea to sea (some have tried to interpret this as from the Mediterranean Sea to the Dead Sea, but a better interpretation of the phrase might be from one end of the earth to the other) and from the North to the East We would have expected something different – namely from North to South.

But, Judah lay to the south of Israel. And as much as the Northern Kingdom was on the search for God, the one thing that was certain in their minds was that God was not in Jerusalem. Their battle with their southern brothers precluded even considering that God might be there. Amos realized that Israel was literally looking for God in all the wrong places.

And that is often our current problem. In a culture that is increasingly realizing its need for spirituality, they have often written the Christian Church off as even a possibility for finding God. And in my honest moments, I totally understand why. We have blown it in so many ways and need to beg forgiveness from a searching world. But underneath our own failures, I still believe that the Christian Church has the answer. We know a God that is not dead.

Sabbath is asking the right questions, and at least in some ways is arriving at the right conclusions. “God is Dead?” concludes with these words:

But still the voices in my head 
Are telling me that god is dead 
The blood pours down 
The rain turns red 
I don’t believe that God is dead   (Butler, Iommi, Osbourne)

I hear the same voices and have come to the same conclusion. For those who are searching, it is not in vain. God is there and he can be found (but we might have to look to the south.)

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Amos 9