Charles Swindoll says, "... it's a mad, bad, sad world."1 You knew that already?

He quotes Barbara Johnson who writes in her book Splashes of Joy in the Cesspools of Life: "The rain falls on the just and also on the unjust, but chiefly on the just, because the unjust steals the just's umbrella."2

The Prophet Amos, who lived and told it like it was about 750 years before the birth of Jesus, agreed with that assessment of life. There is a lot about this world that's mad or bad or sad or even "all of the above." And it falls on all of us, even the best of us, some of the time and sometimes all at the same time. But Amos' preaching was to Israel at a time when life for the nation of the people of God was actually "none of the above." It wasn't "mad, bad or sad" from their perspective. In fact,…