Tuesday, September 15, 2020
Ivory Apartments
On the day when I punish Israel for his crimes, I will visit also the altars of Bethel: the horns of the altar shall be broken off and fall to the ground. Then will I strike the winter house and the summer house; the ivory apartments shall be ruined, and their many rooms shall be no more, says the Lord.
“The reference to ‘houses adorned with ivory” in Amos 3:15 finds confirmation in the discovery of the Samaria Ivories, a collection of hundreds of pieces of artwork, including over 200 fragments uncovered in the rubbish heap of a building on the city’s acropolis. This ‘ivory building’ is associated with the Israelite king Ahab (c. 874-853 B.C.), who is said to have constructed a palace ‘inlaid with ivory’ in Samaria (1Ki 22:39)”. (Zondervan 1449)
God says: You are my chosen people. I have created you and I love. I have protected you, guided you, redeemed you and made you a holy people; and yet you turn from me. You have hidden away in your ivoried apartments and begun to worship this life of luxury you have fashioned for yourself. You have set up your own temple. You have begun to worship pagan gods who love nothing about you . . . for you are created in my image and not theirs. ou are made to live with me in the towering forests and running streams of my heart. You are made for goodness rather than evil. You have no need of ivory and you have no need of the exclusive places apart into which you withdraw. Come out of your imagined shelter and serve my weak and little ones. For they are the ivoried pieces that adorn my heart.
We are easily drawn in by the lure of the false life of living as gods and we turn away from life in the Spirit of God. We are called to live as the shimmering image of God. Let us climb down out of the false ivory apartments in which we have taken illusory shelter; let us unite with Christ’s mystical body of love; and let us live and love in the Spirit of God who loves us so.
Tomorrow, the Cows of Bashan.
“The Samaria Ivories.” ARCHAEOLOGICAL STUDY BIBLE (NIV). Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2005. Print.
Image from: https://www.redzonetech.net/blog/are-boards-suffering-from-its-ivory-tower-syndrome/
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