Amos 4:1-3. A warning to the women of Samaria, the "cows of Bashan ... who oppress the poor, who crush the needy, who say to their husbands "Bring, that we may drink!" The days are coming when you will be taken away with hooks, led away through the breaches, every one straight before her, and cast into Harmon.

Not knowing what or where Harmon was, I looked it up and it turns out that no one knows what it is - if it is correctly written, there is and was no such place. Most think it was a translation error, but the meaning is clear - it is a bad place to go - it's symbolizes exile and the slaughter of animals being led to it by hook.

The women of Samaria are living large while the poor and needy suffer. They do not even think of others while they cry out "Bring, that we may drink!" I wonder how many of them are even aware of the poor in their midst. Did they simply not see them? I think of the rich man walking past Lazarus the beggar everyday, never "seeing" him, and then begging from hell to warn his brothers to look out for the needs of the poor. He did not get to warn them, because his brothers had been warned by Moses on the prophets. This reading from Amos is one of the places that they were warned!

This is a warning to all of us. I have been a woman of Samaria - eating and drinking whatever I want in my comfortable life while others are suffering. It took COVID for me to really wake up to this - I saw how people were suffering greatly with the restrictions and the lockdowns - losing their jobs and businesses, unable to see loved ones, having loneliness and great anxiety and pain that no one would acknowledge, and for which they were often criticized and ridiculed. It was, and continues to be, horrendous. Meanwhile, our politicians and leaders kept working, being paid, and gathering, basically doing whatever they wanted, and only occasionally getting caught.

The people who could work from home did not give a second thought to those who couldn't and were deprived of so much. Mental illness, suicides, violence, anger - all of these are on the rise and it is, in large part, due to the failure to see the needy and care for them.

Now I see the needy everywhere. They don't always look needy, but there that is no excuse. Everyone has a burden that I am to try to be alert to and help them with. My life, my income, my comfort are not about me - they are all to be used for my own good, yes, but also and mainly for the good of others.