Seek the Lord
 “seek the Lord that you may live. . . He who made the pleiades and orion and changes deep darkness into morning, Who also darkens day into  night, Who calls  for the waters of the sea and pours them out on the surface of the earth, the Lord is His name.”
                                                                                                                                                                   Amos 5:6-8

God is a civil rights activist.  it’s not a political platform because He doesn’t have to answer to people or impress companies to fund his campaign.  He wasn’t elected God, and He can’t be impeached.  He cares about people!  simple as that.  He loves the poor and the alien and the orphan and the widow and babies and pure and holy marriages.  and so there is a lot of history behind these verses.  israel had yet again forsaken God to go off and pursue wealth and happiness and all the stuff the world says we all need at the expense of the very people that He loves so much!  in the midst of materialism, morality went down the drain.  so God sent plagues and armies and calamity of all shapes and sizes to jog their memory that He was there and draw them back to Him.  however, just as we so often times are, they were foolish and didn’t listen, so God sent along an old fig-picker named amos to speak these words to them.  “seek the Lord that you may live.”  He was being literal here.  He was saying, “I won’t smoke you if you just draw near to me. . . God . . . THE GOD . . . the One who made all this . . . remember Me?”  i think we underestimate how much our sin really hurts God.  how seriously He takes it.  our greedy, materialistic sin nature will try and convince us that we need stuff more than we need Jesus, and the more and more we give in, the further we drift from our first Love.  hear His words. . . “seek Me that you may live.”  respond.
oh Lord our God a sacrifice of praise we bring / not words but lives of open hands we bring to You / for You are not concerned with offering or songs we bring to You / Your sacrifice is our pursuit to know You as our God / we will seek You Lord, we will seek You Lord and live / for no other name is worthy and no other God contends / we will seek You Lord, we will seek You Lord and live