I brought you up out of Egypt and led you forty years in the wilderness to give you the land of the Amorites. – Amos 2:10

Today’s Scripture Reading (December 31, 2019): Amos 2

Today we close the door on 2019. It seems that every year, in the mind of some, the year past is a candidate for the worst year ever award. Maybe that is because it is easy for the negative things to outshine the positives. 2019 will likely be remembered for its scandals. The impeachment trial of President Donald Trump will top that list, but also Rudy Giuliani and Ukraine, the Bidens and the aforementioned Ukraine, and the tour of a sixteen-year-old student named Greta Thunberg and her defense of the Environment. Thunberg seemed to bring a divide among us with her straightforward defense of the environment and her call for immediate action. Often we seem to forget the activist is only sixteen and probably deserves more of our respect than our disdain.

But it was also the year that AC/DC’s lead singer, Brian Johnson, and his wife sold a property for $335,000 and donated the money to a Local Children’s Foundation. It was the year that Northview Church in Indiana (all the Christian Church wants is money) paid off the medical debt for almost 6,000 families in the area to the tune of $7.8 Million. And the year that Dwayne Johnson sang the “Moana” song to a three-year-old boy fighting cancer. The positive stories of 2019 probably outweigh the negative ones, and yet we all seem to get to this point in the year and rush to turn the page to 2020 in the hope that it will be better. And 2020 might be a better year, but that result will probably depend on what we decide to do with the New Year.

 Amos speaking the words of God to Israel reminds them of the good that God had done in their past. Yes, there is plenty of negative that Amos speaks of to the Northern Kingdom, but he wants them to remember the good that God had done in their midst. The God of the Temple in Jerusalem was the one who brought them up out of Egypt. And it was this God who had led through the forty years in the wilderness. The people seemed to have forgotten the good and focused on the bad. And the reality is that when we focus on the negative, bad behavior is often the result.

2020 will hold both the good and the bad, but maybe we can endeavor in this New Year to let the good sit with us a while longer than we have in the past. Maybe in 2020, we can do what Paul encouraged us to do. “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things” (Philippians 4:8).

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Amos 3