Bible Journaling: The Book of Amos

In this book of the prophet Amos, we find a lot of themes that we have come across a lot in our journey of journaling through all the books of the Bible. See if you can identify some main themes of the story of God and His people, and then try to find their place in the book of Amos.

For a broader view of this book of the Bible, we encourage you to watch this video:

Bible journaling tip: 

In every relationship in your life, there is a common theme: emotional maturity. No matter what you do, the chances are good that you are spending a lot of time each day relating to other people and experiencing a wide array of emotions. Jesus calls us to become like him. Yes, even in our emotions! Make your own emotion wheel and leave extra space. As you read the Bible, fill in Scripture references or names of Bible characters under the various emotions. Where in the Bible do we read about jealousy? e.g. Cain and Abel.

LOOK UP (information): encounter God through the Scripture 

Author:

Amos was a shepherd and he looked after sycamore figs - read Amos 7:14 about how God called Amos from a simple life as a farmer to the greatest calling of all: to prophesy to the people. Can you find any other places in the book of Amos where he speaks using metaphors from his previous job: about sheep or figs?

Audience:

Amos prophesied to Israel at a time when they were thriving. This was 40 years before the Assyrian destruction and almost 200 years before the Babylonian exile. Do you see a theme of how most of the prophets were rejected and not believed by the people who they brought their messages to? What does this tell you about people? What does this say about God? Would you be willing to keep on sharing a message that was repeatedly ridiculed and dismissed?

History:

Interestingly in the first sentence Amos tells his readers about an earthquake. Natural disasters are still remembered for a long time in our modern world, but in the ancient world it was remembered even longer and people would often speak in this way that Amos is doing: “this happened 2 years before the earthquake”. There is actual archeological evidence of such an earthquake which can be found here. Do you sometimes struggle to remember that the Bible is real and that it does not always stand in contradiction to science and archeology? You can visit this site… to take a walk through the Bible through the perspective of archeology. This means that if you read about a place, you can search the name of it and find what it would have looked it, what we know about that region, and even possibly some artefacts from that time like pots, paintings, or tools.

Genre:

See if you can identify a pattern in the first 8 paragraphs… mark similar words in the same color. For example: each paragraph starts with “I will not relent from punishing…”. Can you find any other repetitive patterns?

LOOK IN: (revelation): contemplate / reflect on our own lives

Key verse:

Amos 8:11-12 NIV

“The days are coming,” declares the Sovereign Lord, “when I will send a famine through the land— not a famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord. People will stagger from sea to sea and wander from north to east, searching for the word of the Lord, but they will not find it.

Inspiration:

These verses speak about a time when people will hunger and thirst for hearing God’s voice. Where else in the Bible have you read about “hungering and thirsting”? Can you remember where Jesus spoke about becoming the “living water”? What does this mean for us who are thirsty? How does Jesus fulfill the law and prophets why speaking about becoming living water?

LOOK OUT (transformation): respond with creative worship action  

Drawing prompt:

Draw a picture of the prophet Amos as a shepherd and a fig farmer, being called by God. Challenge yourself to illustrate as many other elements from the book of Amos in your drawing.

• Can you add the 5 visions?
• How about the dry land (8:11) versus the restoration (9:13)?

Bible Journey with HolyJot:

Here are some questions / prompts provided by the HolyJot community. 

• How was repentance possible, according to these verses of this book? (Amos 5:4-6), (Amos 5:14-15), (Amos 5:23-24)
• What was Amos’s portrayal of God in verses eight and nine of this book? (Amos 5:8-9)

Follow this link to dive into this book with an online Bible Study group.

 Writing prompt:

There is a main theme in the book of Amos about God coming to establish Justice and Righteousness. What do these words mean to you? Look up definitions of each and write them down on a page. Underneath that, we will write about how these terms are described in the book of Amos. 

Here are some examples:
Amos 5:15 “Hate evil and love good; establish justice at the city gate”.

Amos 5:24 “Let justice flow like water, and righteousness, like an unfailing stream.”

Prayer:

God, I want to thank you for the book of the prophet Amos. Help me to read with the guidance of your Spirit to see what this text can say to me today. You are powerful and all justice and righteousness belongs to You - You are the perfecter of those things. Teach me your ways. Let my response to this text be worship unto you!