Hearth & Altar

On that day I will raise up the fallen hut of David. The book of Amos ends not with judgment but with this: the ruined hut rebuilt, the breaches walled up, the ruins raised. The plowman overtaking the reaper - the harvest so abundant that the planting has already begun before the harvest is done. The mountains dripping with grape juice. Never again shall they be plucked from the land.

The God who brought upheaval like Sodom, who rejected the noisy songs, who expelled the shepherd-prophet from Bethel - this is the same God who promises the restoration. The judgment and the promise belong to the same voice.

Kindness and truth shall meet; justice and peace shall kiss. The psalm's image of the restoration is relational - the separated things reuniting, the reconciled things touching. Truth springing from the earth, justice looking down from heaven: the vertical and horizontal coming together.

Can the wedding guests mourn while the bridegroom is with them? Jesus names the present moment: the bridegroom is here. The fasting will come when he is taken. But now is not that time. The new wine is here and it requires new wineskins - the old structures of piety cannot contain what has arrived.

• For our family, that the fallen hut would be raised - the places in our household where ruin has accumulated and the breaches need walling up, we pray to the Lord.
• For those in the ruin rather than the restoration, that on that day would feel present and not infinitely deferred, we pray to the Lord.
• For those still trying to put the new wine into old wineskins - whose religious life cannot accommodate what God is actually doing - that the new wineskins would be given and accepted, we pray to the Lord.
• In this month of the Precious Blood, for the blood that is the new wine - poured out once, restoring what no old sacrifice could restore, we pray to the Lord.

Kindness and truth shall meet; justice and peace shall kiss. Name one place in your life where kindness and truth have been at odds - where the true thing and the kind thing have seemed incompatible. Bring them together this week: the specific truth spoken with the specific kindness. Both are present in the psalm's vision.

The plowman shall overtake the reaper. Read your children this image of abundance: the harvest so full that you are still harvesting when it is time to plant again. Ask them: what do you think it would be like to have more than enough? Let them imagine the promised restoration.