November 4, 2026
by Richard Brashear
I sat down last week and read back through every post that was written as we finished Hosea, Amos, and Jonah.
Eighteen posts. Ten different and unique voices from our congregation.
I already knew what the posts were going to say (I had already read the posts!). They were going to talk about a judgment that refused to stay at a safe distance, about an empty religion exposed, and about a God who just would not give up on His people (or you and me).
What stood out this time was how many different people in the congregation could write about these texts with clarity and honesty, and how often they landed in the same place with the same message to us. These posts were written by 10 different hands and still three themes kept showing up in the posts.
Here’s a quick recap of the posts.
Kirk opened Hosea by refusing to leave the “ugly requirement” as the last word in Hosea’s Family. “God desires relationship… even in this rather ugly requirement we see the deep desire of God to relate to Israel—to us.” Later, in Legal Proceedings, he would not let us skip the list in chapter 4. “It’s brutal. Sometimes truth cuts,” he wrote. “It was OUR guilt that sent Jesus to the Cross.” He gave us Tolkien’s eucatastrophe so the weight wouldn’t have the last word. He brought the reality of our sins home, and hard.
Jen used the broom story in Punishment Coming to show what we do when everything feels out of control. She showed us (and herself) reaching for anything that feels like control, then pointed to the turn: “he has torn us, that he may heal us.” She closed with the simplest invitation in the series: “Let us press on to know the LORD.”
Richard kept coming back to the dew image in Full Churches, Fickle Hearts. “Your love is like a morning cloud, like the dew that goes early away.” Richard named the gap between Sunday and Monday and asked whether we are giving God the “hesed” (steadfast love) that He actually wants or just the mist that disappears. Later, in Fed, Full, and Forgetful, Richard warned that the seasons that feel successful are often the ones in which we drift: “They were filled, and their heart was lifted up; therefore they forgot me.”
Brett used the picture of a hollowed-out marriage in Rituals Without Relationship. “The outward signs are still there, but the relationship has been hollowed out.” Then in The Heart of God Toward a Wayward People he let us hear the Father’s cry: “How can I give you up?… My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender.” Those two posts together show the full scope of the tension of Hosea.
Julie used the MADD example in No Worship in a Foreign Land to make the warnings specific. “Vague warnings are easy to shrug off. Specific ones are much harder to ignore.” Then she did the flip: everything Israel lost, we receive in Christ. What a way to point us to the New Testament promise!
Kate stayed with the shift in tone in The God Who Feels. Right after the “completely destroyed” language she pointed to “When Israel was a child, I loved him” and asked the question that made me think: “It’s easy to sense God’s anger in Hosea. But what about his tenderness? And what about his heartbreak?” We often get emotional over the bad things, but bypass appreciating the good things God does, sometimes silently. That is some good insight!
Nathan closed Hosea with the call to return in Return, O Israel. “Return, O Israel… I will heal.” He reminded us that God’s compassion fills His every breath and that “Because of Him, we can return and be healed, EVERY TIME.”
Hosea never stayed in one place. And these posts didn’t either.
These writers let the judgment stand. They named the empty religion and the love that doesn’t last (or the love that is “for show”), and they kept pointing us to the Father who still will not let go of Israel (or us) no matter how much we wander.
Clinton showed how Amos sets the trap in The Lion, The Trap, and The Mirror. He had us cheering for the surrounding nations until Amos circled back. “You can almost hear them saying, ‘It’s about time! Called it!’ But they started cheering too soon.” Then he put the mirror up: “We abandon the moral high ground when we cheer for the destruction of the ‘outgroup’ because the moral rot is right there inside of us.”
Richard focused on the line “known by God” in Known by God. Guilty Before God. “‘Known by God’ does not mean protected from God,” Richard wrote. “It means we do not get to receive His mercy and then live as though it changes nothing.”
Kirk connected Amos 4 and 5 to God’s questions in Job in Prepare to Meet Your God. “Although God asks a question, He is actually making as clear a statement as He does in Amos—‘I am God.’ We need to respond as Job did… ‘Behold, I am of small account.’” He walked us through the three calls to seek and live and the reminder that God doesn’t ask the impossible without providing the way: “Seek me and live.”
Jen gave us some great insight from John Perkins in Let Justice Roll Down and asked what visible justice looks like. She quoted Amos 5:24 and asked, “How can I make the truth of the gospel visible in my life and community?” She wouldn’t let “good Bible club students” be enough.
Clinton wrote about Amos’s unqualified call and his own experience in Showing up at a Gun Fight with a Pocket Knife. “I was no prophet, nor a prophet’s son,” he wrote, then Clinton told his own Wycliffe stories and left us with the question: “Are we, like Amos, ready to obey and show up at a gun fight with a pocket knife?”
Lisa noticed the two times God relented in Between the Easy Yes and Definitive No. The Lord relented twice when Amos prayed. “The answer might not be what we want in the end,” she wrote, “but until that day comes, who knows? Prayer is powerful.” She had a great set of small group questions worth revisiting.
Richard ended with the turn in Amos 9 in The Judge Who Restores. After Amos 9 shows that no one gets out Richard wrote, “The judgment is real, but it doesn’t get the last word. … Finally, some good news. The Judge is also the Restorer… The promise isn’t that everything will look strong right now. It’s that what God raises and plants will hold.”
Amos never lets the judgment stay “out there.” And each of these posts didn’t either. They named the sin, the empty altars and prideful worship, and the land of “maybe” but each one also pointed us to the God who bears the guilt and raises what has fallen. The God who judges is the God who also gives us the grace to go on.
Laura wrote about Jonah’s lingering resentment in A God Whose Character Is Always to Have Mercy. Jonah never actually repents in the story. He preaches, then sits and waits for the judgment he wanted. God still uses him. And still has mercy on Nineveh. Against Jonah’s will, even.
Jonah forces the question the other two books also raised but in a little different way: will we resent God’s mercy when it lands on the people we think deserve judgment?
Taken together, the posts did what the minor prophets do. They refused to let judgment stay at a safe distance. They exposed empty religion. And they kept returning us to a God who judges, heals, and restores.
The fact that so many of us could write about these books with clarity, honesty, and faithful insight should be an encouragement to our congregation.
We have good teachers. We also have good writers.
Both matter, and both showed up in this series.
That’s what these posts gave me.
LINKS TO ALL OF THE POSTS
Hosea
Amos
Jonah