Jilted Love

Jilted Love

Bible Reading:

Amos 2: 6-16

PREPARED BY

KEN GEHRELS

PASTOR

CALVIN CHRISTIAN REFORMED CHURCH

NEPEAN, ONTARIO

--

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They began to notice that she just wasn’t the same.

Sue had been pouring their coffee for the last 10 years every Thursday morning at the neighborhood bar

& grill. But the last two weeks she was so quiet, mouth pulled tight. Didn’t she even seem to walk a bit slower

between the closely packed tables? During a lull in business, while topping up with a splash, Freda asked -

“You ok?”

And out it came - Sue’s boyfriend had left. They’d been together almost 5 years, and had been making

noises about getting married. She’d begun to dream of building a home together, maybe even children. Till the

phone call - he didn’t want to see her anymore..... at least not for now.... needed space..... to think.

No matter how hard she tried to hide it - no doing. It was devastating.

Some of you can identify.

Perhaps because you’ve been dropped, hard, somewhere along the way.

Or let down.

Disappointed.

By someone you love dearly.

And you know, oh so desperately well how you know, that the worst hurts a person can experience, the deepest

disappointments, the most devastating betrayals are the ones committed by those closest to you.

We don’t lose even a wink of sleep over the fact that the Prime Minister never calls us.

It may bother us for 3 minutes when the gas bar attendant snarls at us.

We have no connection of the heart with them.

BUT

When someone crosses you or lets you down, and you have invested yourself in that person, it cuts deep.

If no strings have been tied from your heart to someone else’s, then there are none that can be broken,

none that can be ripped out and cause great pain.

But when your heart is tied to someone else’s, for them to wrestle against that tie, or to try and sever

the connection,

or burn it,

can hurt like almost nothing else in life.

When I talk with senior citizens, people that have lived through a lot -

the Great Depression,

War,

Immigration

what strikes me again and again is that the thing that cuts deeper and hurts longer and leaves a bigger scar than

anything else....

......is when their children lash out against them, rebel, or disown them.

Now why make this point?

Because this whole dynamic of relationships gets right at the heart of the passage we read.

If you understand how treachery between those who have loved cuts far deeper than treachery between

strangers --

– if you understand that -

then you will understand the motivation for Amos 2 - actually, for all of Amos.

The cry through the lips of the prophet is the cry of One who has been wounded in this deep, inner, very personal

sort of way.

It is the cry of God;

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the cry of the Heavenly Father

Father of Israel

who is slapped in the face,

disowned,

scorned,

rejected by His spiritual children.

Israel’s story is one of Amazing Grace, chapter after chapter of amazing grace..

Want to read about it in poetry? Read Psalm 104 and 105..

Rather read the story version - the account? Read Exodus, Samuel, Kings, Chronicles.

There are the blessings of daily care – a well-watered creation, animals, food in the fields – the common

daily graces of God.

Beyond that -

Extracting a rag-tag group of foreign slaves out of the Egyptian empire, and applying to them blessings that had

been promised to their forefather Abraham.

As Psalm 105 says:

“He brought out Israel, laden with silver and gold, and from among their tribes no one faltered....

He spread out a cloud as a covering, and a fire to give light at night. They asked, and he

brought them quail and satisfied them with the bread of heaven. He opened the rock, and water

gushed out.... He gave them the lands of the nations, and they fell heir to what others had toiled

for....”

Samuel, Saul, David, Hezekiah.....

As you read through the Old Testament and take in the history of the nation of Israel you can’t help but

be struck by the number of times, again and again, that God comes through for them in the pinch.

You can’t help but be struck by the amazing opportunities and blessings with which God deluges his

people.

Generation after generation He keeps on coming through for them.

He remains, as it were, like a faithful bridegroom committed to the marriage covenant.

He gives, and gives and gives and gives.......

again and again and again.

for their sake I will remember the covenant with their ancestors whom I brought out of Egypt in the sight of the