Famine of God's Word

[S] Amos 8:11-12 --
¹¹"Behold, days are coming," declares the Lord GOD,
"When I will send a famine on the land,
Not a famine for bread or a thirst for water,
But rather for hearing the words of the LORD.
¹²"People will stagger from sea to sea
And from the north even to the east;
They will go to and fro toseek the word of the LORD,
But they will not find it.

[O] There are two types of famines: lacking physical food, or spiritual food. The physical food is felt tangibly and more immediately than the spiritual food because we are less sensitive to the spiritual aspect of our health than the physical. We miss a meal and our stomachs will enter into a red-alert condition and we begin to lose strength making almost everything look like food to eat. It appears that our minds are stronger than our stomachs because it can sustain the lack of nourishments far longer, however, by the time it realizes the famine, it is almost too late to recover. So, in some sense stomach's warning system works a lot better. In this passage, God warns about the condition where when our minds come to the point of realizing that we hit the spiritual famine and decide to feed up on spiritual food there may not be any to feed from. This type of a famine is really scary. Without physical food we would only die from this physical world, but without the spiritual food our deaths will last forever.

[A] Store up His Word in my heart (Psalm 119:11) while I can -- NOW. Do not put it off.

[P] Dear God, I praise You for giving me Your Word to feed my mind with. The Bible is like the buffet table where I have unlimited amount of spiritual food. This is wonderful and I will not take this for granted because I may never know when I would face with the situation described in today's passage. What I have in my heart will remain with me and so I will do my best to store up as much as I can now. In Jesus' name. Amen.