Amos 8:8. "Shall not the land tremble on this account, and everyone mourn who dwells in it, and all of it rise like the Nile and be tossed about and sink again, like the Nile of Egypt?" The reason God says the land will tremble and the people mourn is because of the widespread abuse of the poor and vulnerable, especially by the business people of the time, who "buy the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals." (Amos 8:6).

In 2020 I had a vision (one I also wrote about it in 2021, in Hard Visions). I was praying intensely and in great turmoil for people who I loved and I knew to be good people, but who seemed to be blind to evil that was so obvious to me. In fact, many were emphatically promoting or defending people and policies that were or would cause great suffering, but they would not listen or engage, and often lashed out, when anyone tried to discuss these things. My vision was this: I found myself alone in a large open field with a swirling cloud-like wind all around me. I was undisturbed, but the winds were all around me, and then coalesced in front of me and formed a huge image of God the Father. I knew, in my heart, that this was the Father, although He never spoke to me. He looked down at me with tremendous love and, while holding my gaze, dug His gigantic right hand into the earth of the field. He raised His hand, now filled with an enormous pile of earth, and held it before me as the dirt fell away. When it had all fallen to the ground, what was left in our Father's hand was a huge pile of skulls, the skulls of infants. He continued to look at me, and in His eyes I saw His tremendous love, but also so much pain and sorrow, along with a glimmer of something telling me that I would understand this, then the vision ended. As unsettling as the vision was, it was incredibly peaceful and loving. I felt no fear, or despair, only love for me and for all and a tragic sadness.

I did understand what I was being told, although I didn't want to fully believe what I was understanding at first. As time has gone by, and events have played out, I have understood more and more. What I understood was that the injustice we have been doing to our fellow man, especially to the weakest and most vulnerable among us, exemplified by the horror of abortion, but prevalent everywhere, has hardened our hearts, making us inhuman to our fellow man. This inhumanity of ours has reached its tipping point, and God was showing me then that He was getting ready to act, and I think there is no doubt now that He is acting, although He is not done yet.

I understood that justice requires God to act, and that we are all going to suffer when He does, whether we had participated in the wrongs or not. When evil takes enough of a hold in a society, or a country, or a world, everyone suffers because of it. Our hearts are hardened, often without us even realizing it, we become inured to the evil around us. That is what I was seeing in the people I was praying for that day, but it was true for me, as well. God does not want us to have hardened hearts, so His justice is not only to vindicate those we have trampled under foot, but also to break the hardness of our hearts, to wake us up and call us back to Him.

So when God says to Amos "Shall not the land tremble on this account, and everyone mourn who dwells in it?" I understand exactly what He meant. He said the same to me, although not in words, but in a vision I will never forget.