Amos 4:11. "I overthrew some of you, as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and you were as a brand plucked out of the burning; yet you did not return to me," says the Lord. (I am not sure why Amos switches between "I" and "God" when speaking for God; I guess it is just one of the possible missteps prophets have to watch out for!)

It is surprisingly easy to miss the fact that God is overthrowing some of us as He did Sodom and Gomorrah. The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is described like this in Genesis: "Then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven; and he overthrew those cities, and all the valley, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground." (Genesis 19:24-25). Because this is the Bible, and is truth, the destruction is rightly attributed to God. But if you were a non-believer and therefore discounted phrases like "the Lord rained" and "from the Lord of Heaven," you could easily say this is a description of a natural event - possibly an uncontrolled fire or a volcanic eruption. As I've written about before, though, God uses the world and everything in to accomplish His purposes. Everything is not either from God or from a natural cause, everything, and I do mean everything, is both. Nothing happens without God's permission, either in His perfect will or His permissive will.

Amos is reminding us that those who were saved from Sodom and Gomorrah's destruction were meant to be to the world as "a brand plucked from the burning;" that is, as a burning reminder of the power of God and His goodness to those who trust in Him, a reminder that would wake up the rest of the world, and set them on fire with His love. Yet the world did not return to God. Most people must have seen Sodom and Gomorrah's destruction as an unfortunate natural event and moved on; they failed to see the hand of God in it.

Now, fast forward to recent history. We have had multiple messages and warnings from Mary, who would never lie to us; we have had more private revelation than we know what to do with, including Divine Mercy and Divine Will, and the world seems to be spinning out of control. We are dealing with wars, pestilence, fires, earthquakes, terrorism, murders, natural and man-made disasters, excess death rates, civil unrest, destruction, corruption at the highest levels, crime, chronic depression, chronic illness, suicide rates climbing, birth rates falling, abortion, rising tyranny, and the outlines of worldwide slavery. Really, everything you could possibly think the Book of Revelation might be talking about is happening all around us, yet so many refuse to see the hand of God in any of it. The almost daily disasters are lamented and then forgotten about. No connections are drawn, no bigger picture is seen, there is a lot of "Thank God it didn't happen to me and mine" (Hezekiah, anyone?), and the world goes right back to the sinful behavior from which God is trying to rouse it.

However, the number of people who see God's hand in all of this is growing daily, just as He intends it to. Those who trust in God are meant to be a firebrand, setting the world on fire with His love. Let's hope the world responds this time! Actually, we know how the story ends, so we know it eventually will!