A few weeks back work was crazy! We had a case that was coming up for trial and the case was ten years old so there was a lot of records, pleadings, letters, and just papers everywhere. We were copying pictures and blowing up exhibits, scanning and placing documents on CDs for trial when all of a sudden the case settled. Thank you Lord it settled! My attorney laughs all the time at me when a case settles because I just jump up and down like Jim Carrey did in Liar Liar and scream "Settle! Settle! Settle!"
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After the dust settled down a little bit my attorney gave me the most precious gift, a copy of The Message. Oh I know a lot of people may frown on that but I just love that version of the Bible. I am able to understand it and it reads like the book that it was intended to be. I'm not a college graduate nor am I any type of scholar and I have so much junk floating around in my head that I need something that is straight to the point and makes perfect sense to me and The Message does just that.
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So, every day before I take the walk into my office I open up my Bible and snatch me a word and the one I got today has intrigued me. It comes from Amos 5 and it is entitled Raw Truth Is Never Popular. As I begin to read these passages I just began to think about how hard the truth is to hear. I don't know about you but I walk around in my own little bubble and I don't pay attention to much that goes on around me and when something happens and I get a big dose of reality right in my face I don't tend to like it.
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I don't really think I could add anything else to these passages so I'm just going to share them with you and I pray that you get what you need from it today because I surely did. I must say...if the writer of Amos could have started it out with "Hey Lori Goodwin...here's a little shut up juice for you..." it would have been well fitted!
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"Woe to you who turn justice to vinegar and stomp righteousness into the mud.Do you realize where you are? You're in a cosmos star-flung with constellations by God, A world God wakes up each morning and puts to bed each night. God dips water from the ocean and gives the land a drink. God, God-revealed, does all this. And he can destroy it as easily as make it. He can turn this vast wonder into total waste. People hate this kind of talk. Raw truth is never popular. But here it is, bluntly spoken: Because you run roughshod over the poor and take the bread right out of their mouths, You're never going to move into the luxury homes you have built. You're never going to drink wine from the expensive vineyards you've planted. I know precisely the extent of your violations, the enormity of your sins. Appalling! You bully right-living people, taking bribes right and left and kicking the poor when they're down. Justice is a lost cause. Evil is epidemic. Decent people throw up their hands. Protest and rebuke are useless, a waste of breath. Seek good and not evil — and live! You talk about God, the God-of-the-Angel-Armies, being your best friend. Well, live like it, and maybe it will happen." Amos 5:7-14 (MSG)
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