It’s too intense!

An introduction to “Don’t you dare love me!”

“It’s too intense to be published for readers on the public market”

Intended, I guess as constructive criticism, these words took root. I know they weren’t meant to be offensive and I trust this one more than most, but to say it is too intense, is to attack at the very heart of this journey, and myself. The entries written on this journey are raw and contain an intentional vulnerability. I’ve both experienced the intense nature of Your heart in this, God, and have allowed myself to explore the feelings deep within my own heart and mind to produce an honesty to the brokenness and hidden thoughts that as humanity we choose not to expose. I feel acutely that the nature of this pain You feel towards Your beloved is somber and earnest, it is intense. You have given me precious insight into Your heart.

  

They needed someone who was prepared to go deep into the places that they had carefully barricaded. The places in their hearts where they had been deeply hurt, where lies about You, and themselves and life and others had been formed and become the truths from which their lives were lived. I loved them, with the Love You had given me for them, and so I left the safe shores of talking about the weather, and entered with them into the deep abyss of their pain. They made themselves vulnerable and deserved nothing less from me than an impassioned ardency towards their exposed hearts. The nature of their vulnerability was of great risk to them, it demanded trust, it needed unconditional love, and I gave myself to those things, treating every thought and feeling they laid open as a special treasure to be regarded with the same degree of preciousness as the risk it took for them to make it be made known. They needed someone who was as serious in their vulnerability as they were in the extreme effort it took to expose themselves. I didn’t know the answers to many of their circumstances, I was in over my head many times, but I loved them and treasured every disclosed word as precious. Their heart cried out, “Don’t you dare love me!” Love had failed and hurt them, and so they had walls of protection built high and wide where nothing could penetrate in order to survive their day to day existence, but those walls were crumbling despite the effort to maintain them, and many days revealed an existence inside that refused to be held together, and their pain leaked. At least to me, it did, because I knew them intimately.

You lead me here. You taught me here about pain and love. I discovered Perfect Love here. You revealed Yourself to me here – both Your own personal pain and Your great love, and it has been an intense journey, but one I am deeply appreciative of and honoured to have been entrusted with. And because of the intense nature of their pain, I examined my own heart and mind as honestly and as raw as I could. I had not been hurt by life as they had, yet my heart revealed a brokenness common to humanity that has found itself lost from the place of Perfect Love that we were designed to live from, and I have walls and barriers, lies and wrong truths about You, just as they had. And it was from here, that I began to write down the things I’d learned, refusing to let these words be another journal that touched the surface, another story that just spoke about the weather, but didn’t go deeper to the fear of the storm that lay beneath. People need to understand the severity of brokenness and sin in their lives. People need to know that it has ruined them. And they need to know the depths of Your love and what this love can do. I have chosen to write in an intense, deep, vulnerable way, because of the nature of our brokenness and the heart You have for us. It has been purposeful. It has revealed my heart’s nature as well as Your own, and it has been with a resolute intentionality to be authentic.

The words spoken to me, though I choose to not let the offense cause resentment and hurt inside, hit my heart. Though it has been said, I guess I should be honoured by this comment, for intense is exactly its purpose.

Don’t you dare love me…

 

Let me love you …

 

When this voice whispers into my heart, it is terrifying! It is unraveling and uncomfortable…

With hundreds of thoughts, all constantly vying for attention, why is it that this thought, this one thing, keeps making its way towards the center? Let me love you.

God, You are asking me to give You permission to love me the way You long to love me. The truth is I feel vulnerable, exposed, without defense and running scared. They are uncomfortable thoughts that I want to push away, back to the inside of me where I have a locked gate with a sign that reads, ‘Do not open! Dangerous emotional territory.’ Yet on a particular day, I found myself letting these thoughts have their voice, and I allowed my mind to wander – to consider this love – that You love me deeply, perfectly, absolutely!

Perhaps, I am beginning, but merely beginning, to get a handle on what Your love for me means. But this is the revelation: Your love for me is terrifying! It’s the next step. You want me to let You love me. Your love is a Perfect Love, exactly what I need. It is without any of the fault and failings that I experience through human love – betrayal, unmet expectations, misunderstood, used, abused, taken for granted, absent, unworthy, unfaithful, untrustworthy – the list is so long. The best of human love cannot completely fulfill or satisfy, and often falls short.

Though to feel loved by someone is a safe, beautiful place to be, it can change in an instant –

death, illness, any traumatic or dramatic change of events can alter that bliss of being loved and can plunge us into a dark and insecure place.

Many have never experienced any real love at all. The love they have known has been abusive or controlling, conditional or demanding, and it’s made love in that person’s life, a negative thing – yet powerfully lived out as the way love is received and given. It’s a disillusioned, misguided, warped, all-I’ve-ever-known, must be what love is, kind of thing, because its what has been taught and experienced. To be loved this way is an unsafe, insecure, fearful, untrusting, held back, shut up, chained, walls high, don’t get hurt, kind of life and thinking.

  

Let me Love you and I will Love you. When this voice whispers into my heart, it is therefore terrifying! It is unraveling and uncomfortable. It demands vulnerability. It raises all my fears and my past, my hurts and unwanted shutdown tight emotions, and it asks me to open myself to a dangerous place.

You loving me, and me letting You love me, are incompatible notions competing with my heart. Oh! I can understand some of that You love me deeply, absolutely and perfectly, but for me to let You love me is a different story. I feel exposed, open to something so strange, yet so powerful –

Could it be the one thing that my heart both desperately longs for and fearfully hides away from?

What could this love do for me? I fear that it would satisfy me completely, fill me up like I long to be filled, secure me when I am unstable and unsafe, make me feel I belong, find in me – an often ugly, selfish, broken, ruined person – someone to be delighted in, invite me into intimacy, desire my company, see in me worth, show me honour and respect, trust me, treasure me, love me unconditionally, is OK with who I am even when I’m not, will love unchangingly when I fail or stuff up, will heal all those broken parts of me. Why then would I fear this?

To allow the unraveling of a carefully constructed fortress protecting my heart from hurt, in order for Love to be permitted in, requires a complete undoing.

Fear holds me together. Fear is protection. Fear is self-preservation. Fear is my survival method for this life. Fear is how I negotiate my day-to-day existence. Fear is my closest ally, my best friend. It is on hand, poised and ready at all times, to accompany me into any situation. What am I without fear? It courses through the neurons in my brain, runs through the blood in my veins, is who I am. Yet You want to take fear – the very thing that keeps me together – and recreate me with Love.

It is said there is no fear in love (1 John 4:17-18, NIV). Love and fear compete, they are incompatible, there is no room in love for fear, and equally no room in fear for love. To let love rebuild me is to give up on fear. “The world we have created is a product of our thinking; it cannot be changed without changing our thinking” (Albert Einstein). My world is created with fear as its foundation, its bricks, its mortar. Its how I think, and how I do life. Therefore, what you ask is a complete undoing of me. And my response? Fear! I would have to change my thinking, an entire lifetime of thoughts that have made me, me. Though fear is crippling, its what I know. Though love is redeeming, it is foreign and requires the dismantling of the carefully constructed person I am.

There is a warped kind of safety in knowing that human love will fail. We are comfortable with broken love because it is familiar. Though we might desire Perfect Love, we don’t know how to handle it or receive it. Your love is, therefore, Perfectly! Absolutely! Deeply! Wonderfully! … Terrifying!

I was designed for love, birthed out of Your love, but I have known only fear and betrayal. I cannot comprehend a completely safe love, because all loves here have failed to be that Perfect Love. All loves I have known, though there is a certain sweetness for a time, have eventually disappointed or disillusioned me. I am terrified of love. I am terrified of opening myself to the vulnerability of allowing someone to love me. And even though I am learning that You would never use me or mistreat me, this truth has failed to yet allow me to give myself permission to let it in. In my mind, I hear and am enticed by Your words, “perfect love drives out fear” (1 John 4:18, NIV), but further in, deep inside, I am terrified of allowing that Perfect Love to love me. All other loves have damaged me too greatly to let me consider it or to place my hope in.

And yet…it still entices. It still pulls at my heart and my emotions and my entire being…Let Me love you…and I will love you. It entices because perhaps it is home. That place of…this is where I belong. This is what my heart has longed for. I am in turmoil. A terrified, dare I hope, turmoil.

It’s in this conflicting state of mind that is this journey of love.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Taken by surprise …

Maybe I have subconsciously placed you alongside the gods of Mythology…

The story of Hosea* has taken me by surprise. It has opened my eyes – actually my very soul – to Your heartache God, and in doing so, You have revealed a side of You that I had not before given much attention to, or attributed to You, as God.

Of course, I have always known You as the God of Love, but,

I have not before understood as I do now, You, as God who feels deeply, powerfully and painfully, a broken heart towards humanity.

You are the Almighty, Powerful, All-knowing God, so I guess I thought that meant love beyond emotional sentience – kind of a knowing and in control and volitional love, where You choose, exercise and resolve to love as an act of the will – as opposed to a sensitive kind of love, influenced and responsive to the things around You, and towards the actions of humans. Yet Hosea’s story, shows You possess what I have thought to be exclusive human qualities – anguish, deep pain, passion, desire – emotions that I both feel and often struggle with. I think I thought You were above feeling deeply this way, and that it was a characteristic and a weakness beyond You, limited to us.

Isn’t that what we are taught – emotions are weakness? I know – I know to repress them can lead to being emotionally unhealthy – but we do still push our emotions away. We don’t want people to see how we truly feel. We are told not to cry and to stop being out of control with anger and to get over it.

All this to say that I thought these emotions were confined to human existence, and not true of Yours.

To be God is to be above human. Different. Apart. Other. Yet to be God in the book of Hosea, suggests a Person who is subject to great sensitivity to hurt. Humanity is disposed to an emotional life that rarely fails to affect our actions and reactions and thoughts. I guess I hadn’t considered that this was true of You too.

Maybe I have subconsciously placed You alongside the gods of Mythology, whose stories infiltrate our lives through religion, history, and movies. And though they are taught as myth, and You as truth, I have perhaps muddled both in my thinking to form the picture I have of who You are – they who have the power and ability to make things happen that are outside of the human ability to do so, and who meddle in the lives of humanity – punishing some, honouring others, but who don’t really emotionally get involved.

It’s me grasping at ideas and concepts in order to capture Your essence and to give me an image of You. From childhood, we take in things around us, what we see, hear, know, sense and feel about something, and through the continual experimental exploration of our surroundings, we formulate a picture which becomes stored in our memory bank. I think this is what I have done with You.

You cannot be a ‘something’ stored in my memory bank like it was a shape to box You into. You are big and glorious and above anything I have experienced or known, and yet I constantly gather and box, gather and box, and because of the limitations of knowledge I have about You, I make up my God-box with pictures and ideas gathered here and there. It’s what I do. It’s what humanity does.

    

In this way, through seeing this emotional side of You, I feel like I can identify with You – and You with me – in the things that have been messed up in this world.

So, when I read the first few sentences of Hosea’s story, I sense pain.

I read these words and I glimpse something very deep within about to be expressed…

“The word of the LORD that came to Hosea, son of Beeri.” (Hosea 1:1, NIV)

the LORD.  Oh God, right at the start of this book is You. It’s Your words to Your beloved Israel, extending also to all of humanity. It’s Your book and Your heart expressed. You, LORD, are presenting Your story, through the actions You ask Hosea to take, to the words You want Israel to hear, to Your heart, broken.

How both privileged and devastating it was for Hosea to be chosen to reveal Your heart toward humanity, to be the one who would live out the expression of Perfect Love, knowing and experiencing both delight and gut-wrenching grief – the extremes of emotion that can only be known by one who has truly loved, but has been truly broken by it.

Join me in my weekly blog as I continue to journey God’s story through Hosea…

 

*Hosea was a prophet of God to the nation of Israel. It is where much of my journey of love was awakened. His story is found in the Old Testament part of the Bible. Read more here.

Go!

 

How both privileged and devastating it was for Hosea to be chosen to reveal Your heart toward humanity; to be the one who would live out the expression of Perfect Love, knowing and experiencing both delight and gut-wrenching grief – the extremes of emotion that can only be known by one who has truly loved, but has been truly broken by it.

Privileged because to love as You love is to experience the essence of who You are: God is Love. Hosea could not act out this love as if it were a play to be performed. He could not pretend, because Perfect Love cannot be falsely impersonated.

In the choosing of Hosea, You prepared, gifted and formed a heart within him that both comprehended and felt deeply, Love her as the LORD Loves (Hosea 3:1 NIV). Anything less than this and Hosea would not have been able to feel and express the heart of deep and devastating grief that You felt over the betrayal and unfaithfulness of Israel, and of humanity. That being so, when You asked Hosea to marry Gomer, it is true to say that he loved her. That he looked on at her with tender-hearted emotion, with desire, with an attraction and an eagerness to take her as his wife, to know her, to enjoy her, to delight in her in intimacy. Equally, it is also true to say that he experienced the intense emotion of heart-wrenching grief over her unfaithfulness – love not returned or acknowledged, or at best an unpredictable coming and going of one who takes love one moment and turns from it the next.

From the outset, what I already know, this story is an incredibly sad, yet an incredibly beautiful picture of Your love towards sinful, unfaithful Israel, and of all Your beloved humanity.

I hear the tension of betrayal, grief and desire all mixed together in Your words, “How can I give you up? How can I hand you over? How can I treat you like…? How can I make you like…? My heart is changed within me; all my compassion is aroused.” (Hosea 11:8 NIV)

Sometimes I have this overwhelming grief well up in my chest. It’s when I sense the reality of the ridiculousness of this world’s situation. A ruined, broken, stubborn, sinful, lost humanity – loved! Loved by You, God, with passion – and with such compassion – that it’s beyond comprehension. We are so Loved! 

As I have reviewed this journey and the things I have written and learned, I’ve thought about the many times that I have wanted to correct the word love, to Love. Or perfect love, to Perfect Love. Wanting to capitalise these words because I have come to discover that Love is who You are. God is Love. You are Perfect Love. I cannot describe or use the term love in its purest essence without identifying it as You. It’s not just what You do. You’re not just good at love. You are Love. It is Your name and Your identity and I want to capitalise it, signifying it as Your Person, who You are, Your Name.

To talk or write about Love as the LORD Loves (Hosea 3:1 NIV) here in this blog, is to try and give words and voice to who You are. Human love is not really love at all. It is need. It is lust. It is selfish ambition. It is emptiness looking to be filled. There are attempts at love which are unique, rare and unexampled. Acts shown by one who has felt toward another such devotion and affection, that their behavior has gone beyond normal emotion to a passion-fueled display – sacrifice, care, compassion, commitment, romance. But these are rare and still flawed by humanity.

Love her as the LORD Loves.

Hosea, you were called to love Gomer as God Loves. You were to represent if you like, the Perfect Love of God who is Love. It was to be beyond anything humanity had seen or believed could be – one, fueled with all that was needed, complete and without lack, everything required, perfect in every way – to turn the heart of a desperately lost and emotionally ruined prostitute to you. To make this one who had been used and abused and made worthless and unwanted, treasured and desired.

So in the opening verses God, You say to Hosea, “Go, take to yourself a promiscuous woman.” (Hosea 1:2 NIV) Go, “love her as the LORD loves.” (Hosea 3:1 NIV) Go, is a very purposeful thing that You are asking of Hosea. Go, requires action. To do something. To consciously make the steps towards something. 

   

You don’t sit back and wallow. You are not self-piteous. Your Perfect Love does not allow You to do this. It motivates You. It is an action, Go, kind of Love.

I’ve watched on, completely helpless, as heartbreak was experienced by someone close to me. The frustrating thing was I couldn’t fix it. I couldn’t take it away. I couldn’t make it right, though I was desperate to do so.

I watched as excruciating emotional pain affected every part of his being. Physically, unable to eat; unable to sit still while at the same time unable to focus on any task. Emotionally, a rollercoaster of ups and downs. Tears always threatening to spill.  A helpless desire to bargain and to retract the things said and done to get back what had been lost. The irritable energy to do something to make it right, but the unwillingness on the part of the other one to want it so. The loneliness and desperation to have and be with the very one who he couldn’t have or be with. The anger and frustration over events and words that couldn’t be changed. Tumultuous thoughts that just wouldn’t quit, wouldn’t let him sleep and wouldn’t let him move on.

You know for sure you are alive when you have experienced heartbreak. The emotions are intense and real and painful. He was willing to fight for it, to do whatever it took to get it back, but she was unwilling. For her, it was over. So when I think of You, in this way, heartbroken, it can only be God who can ultimately redeem what is truly lost and undo what has been done, to fix what has been broken, who has a Perfect Love that is what is needed to make wrong things right again, who can be that all that is needed love, that is not lacking or failing to be what it should be, who can move and Go, and that going will achieve what is to be done.

Hosea is a picture of both Your heartache and Your actions to make love right again.

Continued in next week’s blog…

 

[Hosea was a prophet of God to the nation of Israel. It is where much of my journey of love was awakened. His story is found in the Old Testament part of the Bible. Read more here.]

 

Take to yourself…

 

God, You ask Hosea to take to himself (Hosea 1:2 NKJV), Gomer. You ask him to unite with her, take her to himself in closeness, in vulnerability, and in genuine care for her – to join, to marry, to make her his own precious wife – for life. You are not just asking Hosea to marry Gomer by law only,

You are asking him to unite himself in the closest, most endearing way possible.

You ask Hosea to love her, as You love her.

There is a phrase, he knew his wife, which refers to intimacy, the physical act of two becoming one. A symbol of the oneness and intimacy to be shared by the two in all of life – the physical, the spiritual, the emotional, the day by day, moment by moment doing life together. The two would come together having kept themselves for this purpose of intimacy with each other. But God, You ask Hosea to take a known harlot from an Israelite town, a prostitute, a whore, a promiscuous woman – a used and abused, despised, looked down upon, rejected by society except-for-when-the-need-arises, spoiled, broken and brokenhearted woman.

   

But it seems You ask Hosea to marry Gomer as a portrayal of Your Love towards a people that are unfaithful, and who willingly keep walking away from You.

I’ve been thinking about the concept of willingly. It is not an easy word to define in the context here. Willingly bears with it decisions and actions stemming from all that has gone on before; it includes experience and knowledge and desires all muddied by the deception of sin and a broken world. A woman does not desire prostitution, but she will return to it if her experience and knowledge tell her it’s all she is worth, it’s all she can do, she deserves nothing better, she knows nothing else, there is nothing pure or worth dreaming of about love out there. She may be deceived into prostitution through the lure and false hope of satisfaction, of being needed and wanted, of money and beautiful clothes and perfumes and of a twisted perception of love. To willingly return to prostitution just means to me that this one, Gomer, has been so broken along the way. Why else would she choose it over a beautiful Love?

What did it mean for Hosea, a man of God, to marry a prostitute? What did his family think? His religious community? His friends? The whole nation? It, to them, was a shocking, sacrilegious, profane, irreverent, dishonorable, disgusting, morally inappropriate and depraved thing to do. She is dirty, ruined, and known by many men. There is nothing pure here, in this context. Nothing ‘beautiful’ about this bride – except perhaps her face and her body – a body that has been used for sex: of the lust kind, outside of vows and commitment, taking, using, kind of sex.

But love sees beyond that. Hosea sees her and loves her. He acts out of obedience to his heart, both toward You and his feelings towards her. He desires an intimate relationship with this disreputable girl. He loves this unloved and unable-to-love girl. How like You, God, this is!

God, who was Gomer? Who was she as a person? What was her story? How did she get to this place? Was she living in poverty and allured by the money? Was she abused as a child leaving her with a screwed view of love and sex? Was she kicked out of home and in her society with no education, being scorned for her rebellion, with no job skills and no rights, was this her only prospect? Did she get tripped up in the enticement of an over-curious attraction to sex? Had she experienced failure in life and relationships and thought the only thing she could be successful at was the selling of her body? Was she desperately lonely and longing to be wanted? Did her family, out of a misconstrued religious devotion and obligation, give her to be a temple prostitute? Was she sold for the price of a next meal? Questions I cannot know the answers to. But I do know this, something happened along the way to break and ruin her –

a little girl does not dream of growing up to be a prostitute.

I say this, and I believe it to be true, yet I know girlhood dreams can be twisted and messed up. I have a friend whose life was raised in broken relationships, mistrust, dysfunction and warped perceptions of love. I don’t remember how the conversation started, but when I said the words, “a little girl doesn’t dream of growing up to be a prostitute”, this person replied with the words, “Oh, I don’t know about that. I know girls who do.” God, I know it’s a value issue. I know that little girls can look at beauty, and have the strong inner desire to be wanted, especially if they’ve received little or no real love, and these can be twisted into believing that value and love can come through a man lusting for her body, and if she gives him what he wants, then she has gained the so longed for value and love that her heart craves.

Humanity’s value system is totally corrupt! This is such broken thinking, and terribly sad. It’s a broken world’s view of value that leaves humanity feeling empty, yet thirsty for love, but one which has created a billboard illusion that real love, real intimacy, real value, is in the physical.

In asking Hosea to take Gomer, the reality is, You asked him to unite himself intimately to someone for who intimacy and trust would have been no longer things allowed in her mind. These things would have been banned from her thinking and pushed away down deep in order to survive her life. A life that she thought may have given her value, but has left her feeling of no value. How does he engage in intimacy then with someone who can’t? Someone whose emotional walls of protection are so high? Someone who has been lied to about love? Disillusioned about love? No longer believes in love? Someone so deeply hurt? Someone who has been used and abused all under the pretense of love? Someone who gives herself to men for pleasure, but for whom there is no intimacy – just a body?

   

God, You know this about her! This is part of the disastrous, heart-breaking, soul-destroying relationship You ask Hosea to enter – desiring intimacy in one whom it cannot be found! In someone who has been so ruined! Could this be how it is for You with Your people?

I was talking with a girlfriend. She shared with me a conversation she’d had with a work colleague who was about to walk out on his marriage.  He loved his wife of 12 years, but couldn’t give anymore. He had loved her the best he could, yet in return she was like a rock wall. Kindness was returned with a cold shoulder. Affirmation with a shrug or blank response. Love with aloofness. Intimacy with detachment. He knew it was reaction to past hurt within her, and that she couldn’t put it aside and move on – it was too hard. She had chosen to barrier her heart and mind to intimacy, so she wouldn’t be hurt again, and instead, she lived a numb life, hurting the one who had tried his best to love her. Could this have been Hosea’s experience with Gomer?

You ask of Hosea the hardest thing.

You ask him to enter into a relationship where his heart will be torn apart. Where the most emotionally hurtful experience of the betrayal and breaking of promises will happen. Where trust is broken. Where faithfulness is held in little regard. Where love is held in an aloof way. Where intimacy is a one-way street. Hosea walks into this knowingly, and he willingly does it anyway.

I can’t help but think that he must have truly loved Gomer. For him to experience the same feelings as the pain of Your heart, he must have loved her! Just as You loved her!

And equally, God, You ask of Gomer something impossible. To enter into intimacy. That place she has shut down. A place of vulnerability. You love her with love as the LORD loves (Hosea 3:1 NIV) – through this man, Hosea. Love could not be allowed in her life. It was too dangerous, too terrifying. Her heart only has one option, to defiantly reject it with the cry, “Don’t you dare love me!” and to willingly walk away.

Continued in next week’s blog…

 

[Hosea was a prophet of God to the nation of Israel. It is where much of my journey of love was awakened. His story is found in the Old Testament part of the Bible. Read more here.]

 

 

Casual …

Casual def – easy going; happening by chance; fortuitous; without definite or serious intention; careless or offhand; passing; seeming or tending to be indifferent to what is happening; apathetic; unconcerned.

The words, take to yourself, meant for Hosea to make Gomer his. It was a relationship to be had solely with each other. He was to be hers. She was to be his. They were to be betrothed, united to, joined with, married, in a lifelong commitment. Him for her. Her for him. They would make promises and vows of faithfulness and commitment to each other. Gomer would be Hosea’s personal treasured possession, he was to be hers: an intimate relationship where “the two shall become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24,  Mark 10:8 NIV) in every part of their lives together.

God, You are touching my heart deeply with this: take to yourself. It is central to all You want to communicate in this book. It is Your personal story from the beginning of time. It is what was Yours but has been stolen from You. Is not, take to yourself, in essence, the same as with Adam and Eve – the inviting of them into an intimate relationship with You – and equally, what You have intended for us?  It is this same pain of broken relationship that You have carried since the Garden of Eden. And it all comes out, the heart of Your heartbreak, in this second verse in Hosea:

   

Adulterous. The whole sentence here is a contradiction! Adulterous is opposite to take to yourself. It is where intimacy is had with someone other than Hosea. By definition, adultery is “the voluntary sexual relationship between a married person and someone else other than his or her lawful spouse”. Instead of commitment to the one, intimacy with the one, set aside for the one, united with the one, the adulterous person is with someone else other than this one.

The word adulterous is used in Your story of Hosea alongside these words: promiscuous, whore, prostitute, harlot. All are used in this book – most are derogatory terms for a derogatory business. And in this business (not an intimate relationship), payment is received for an act that is meant to be given to one person as a gift.  Gomer is unfaithful to the promises and vows she has made and gives the intimacy intended for the one, to others. Hosea is the groom who enters this relationship with excited anticipated expectation, taking to himself, marrying, making promises to, uniting in, and having faithful intimacy with his wife.

Promiscuous. “Go, marry a promiscuous woman” (Hosea 1:2 NIV). Instead of “adulterous”, later bible translations update the word to “promiscuous”. An adulterous person may be serious in their relationship with another – perhaps they have fallen out of love with their spouse and in love with someone else, but having the serious intent of an intimate relationship with the new partner. Promiscuous adds to its meaning, casual, suggesting an apathetic, blasé, indifferent, unresponsive, cool, disengagement towards the person. And it’s the use of this word, promiscuous, that is what is breaking my heart as I think of You, God. It is an indiscriminate mingling and association with a number of sexual partners on a casual basis.

A number of partners on a casual basis! 

The picture here is of You, God, the groom, having made promises and vows of commitment, faithfulness, and intimacy to Israel – Your bride, Your treasured possession, that You took to Yourself to love – only to find out that she has taken and given herself to others for casual sex.

Casual. 

In this scenario, I feel that sick-to-the-pit-of-your-stomach thing that You must feel. The word casual means, “happening by chance; fortuitous; without definite or serious intention; careless or offhand; passing; seeming or tending to be indifferent to what is happening; apathetic; unconcerned.”

Casual.

A lack of commitment, without serious intention, offhand sexual relations with a number of partners.  To You casual means betrayal. To You it means rejection.

Casual.

An indifferent, unconcerned rejection of You and an apathetic, don’t care attitude towards Your feelings and intentions. This is the pain You experience, God – Gomer’s, Israel’s, humanity’s, betrayal of You for casual sex with many lovers!

Adulterous. Promiscuous. Casual.  These are words of heartache. You use this story of a whore, Gomer, married to a faithful husband, Hosea, as a parable – a story with a spiritual meaning. It is figuratively, yet literally treating the subject of Your pain through the guise of Hosea and Gomer’s marriage. Evidenced in the physical casual sexual acts of Gomer, is an emotional and spiritual picture You convey of Your heart.

A casual lover, a promiscuous partner, a prostitute is not faithful to one. She does not engage in intimacy. The relationship she has with many others is not intimate. She does not allow herself to be vulnerable. It is not a loving personal familiarity or closeness that she shares with her lovers. There is no knowledge of deep togetherness or understanding of the one she is with, coupled with warmness or affection. There is no becoming one. Instead, it is just a superficial, non-committal, casual, non-exclusive ‘arrangement’. Vulnerability, closeness, the sharing of hopes and dreams are not only buried and refused surface time, they become the enemy, yet these were the very things you longed for with Israel.

And for Gomer’s husband, Hosea, it is an excruciatingly painful reality. Just as it is for You with us…

(Credit for this video to Irving Bible Church and the production team)

You created us for love. You want intimacy with us. How Your heart must be aching over us.

Continued in next week’s blog…

[Hosea was a prophet of God to the nation of Israel. It is where much of this journey of love was awakened. His story is found in the Old Testament part of the Bible. Read more here.]

The lonely part of you…

I’m into James Arthur at the moment. Just loving his lyrics and sound. He has written a song, “Let me love the lonely” – it is perhaps unknowingly to him, a deeply spiritual song, whose lyrics speak of the desire to have someone who will love us intimately. I have listened to it often, lately.

If the readers of this Blog had opportunity to read the post, ‘Casual…’ they would know of the heartache of Your love, God, offered but rejected for casual lovers – lovers who are not and cannot be intimate with our souls.

Love so perfect, able to satisfy thoroughly all the emotional, mental, spiritual, heart and soul needs of us, has been rejected since the beginning of time, for ‘casual’ love. God, You reveal to Hosea that You are a broken-hearted lover. Though You deeply experience the heartache of love rejected, You are also grief-stricken, watching on as humanity gives themselves over and over, to lovers that can never satisfy.

You have privileged me with insight into Your heart through Hosea, but equally, I have also seen the heart of my girlfriends, the precious ‘Gomer’s’ of my world – and at the heart of them, is love that has caused their deep pain. Hurtful words spoken (or words left unspoken) that have defined their being and destiny; shattered self-worth from actions and words that have left them feeling of little or no value; parents who haven’t been able to provide the safe emotional love they desperately needed in their vulnerable years; a continual search for love in people and things; and those haunting questions, “Am I worthy of love? Who will love me, for me? What is it about me that I cannot find the love my heart so longs for?” all contribute to their pain. I hear their anger as they recall those times treated only as sex objects – the crude comments, the gestures, the looks, the abuse. I see the ache of repeated failure of relationships – the honeymoon, the ‘marriage’, the break-up. And with sorrow, I see the impenetrable walls built to guard their hearts, grow wider and taller and deeper, lest they be hurt – again!  – all the love they have ever known has hurt.

It’s why they choose ‘casual’. The fear of love being painful and the vulnerability that always seems to accompany love causes them to reject true intimacy, but ‘casual’ is a destructive love– it makes them lonelier than ever.

I know this is true of my life: the things I seek fulfillment in, the people I rely on to keep my self-worth intact…things and people that always leave me wanting for something deeper than they have the ability to offer.

The deepest part of us is lonely for love that cannot be found in others, yet the relentless pursuit of it drives us on. When we cannot be filled up with someone, we look elsewhere to things – the purchase of things, the doing of things, the pursuit of anything to fill that empty void, but the nature of casual means it will never be anything more than that, ‘casual’. Being ‘married’ to You is the only way we will ever find our love needs met. 

   

“There’s more to sex than mere skin on skin. Sex is as much spiritual mystery as physical fact. As written in Scripture, “The two become one.” Since we want to become spiritually one with the Master, we must not pursue the kind of sex that avoids commitment and intimacy, leaving us more lonely than ever—the kind of sex that can never “become one.” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20 MSG)

These words speak to both the pain You carry and the heart of my girlfriends, the heart of all humanity. “There is more to sex than mere skin on skin.” We are beings with so much more depth to us than merely our skin – having a soul that needs to know its worth, a spirit designed to be intimately linked to You, a complex mind that is only safe when loved well or else caves in to anxiety, or depression, and a heart that feels and experiences every word spoken, every deed done…deeply.  

We are an intricate, complicated assemblage of interconnected parts that do not exist independently of each other.

Having ‘sex’ without intimacy, casual relationships, mere skin on skin experiences with all those things we pursue to fill us up, and the desire to keep hidden our fear of vulnerability, never fills that need we have to ‘becoming one’. Becoming one was Your created ideal – we were designed to be one with the Lover of our Souls, the source of love. Linked spiritually with You in the creation of us, yet denying this, and seeking casual relationships with other lovers, avoiding commitment and intimacy, leaves “us more lonely than ever”.

It is a loneliness that comes from feeling ‘soul alone’. Loneliness that comes from the need for our heart and soul, spirit and mind, our entire being, to be loved to its complex, complicated, intricate, depths.

You carry this pain towards humanity, knowing the love You have for us fulfills, completes, satisfies, yet has been rejected – the seeking instead, of ‘casual’ lovers that never satisfy and who leave us lonelier than ever. Your continual whisper heard, “Let me love the lonely part of you” is met with the reply, “Don’t you dare love me!” Only You can love us to our depths! Our fear-filled hearts, ruined by the accumulation of broken love experiences respond the same as Gomer’s did to Hosea: we turn and walk away. It’s too hard to trust ourselves to love.

Continued in next week’s blog…

 

[Hosea was a prophet of God to the nation of Israel. It is where much of this journey of love was awakened. His story is found in the Old Testament part of the Bible. Read more here.]

 

 

 

Guilty…

God, the reason You ask Hosea to marry Gomer is revealed. It was for privileged and devastating personal insight, but it was also for Hosea to relay the heartache and grief You feel. Through his didactic life-experience and instructive word to Your beloved Israel, he portrays Your heart. “Go, take to yourself an adulterous wife and children of unfaithfulness because the land is guilty of the vilest adultery in departing from the LORD” (Hosea 1:2 NIV 1984). ‘Because’ is followed by the explanation for what might seem to be a very unconventional and peculiar directive. If there were any mystery associated with this specific instruction to Hosea to marry Gomer a prostitute, it is now clear, “…because the land is guilty of the vilest adultery”.

‘Because’…this land, the place of promise, set apart for Your people to dwell in, was to be their home – and everything about that home was to be part of this intimate relationship You had invited them into. Israel was a people loved by You. They were treasured by You (Exodus 19:5 NIV). But, the land had become a place where instead of intimacy, there was “vilest adultery”. Israel had departed from You, to be united with other lovers – the surrounding nations and their religions.

This Promised Land was, as if it were, a new Garden of Eden – the chance to experience what Adam and Eve had before they betrayed You. “…the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day…” (Genesis 3:8 NIV) carries the implication that this was a regular enjoyable experience mutually had with You. Regarding this new Promised Land, You said to Israel, “I will put my dwelling place among you, and I will not abhor you. I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be my people” (Leviticus 26:11-12 NIV), and, it is Your desire fulfilled in a future restored day, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God” (Revelation 21:3 NIV). But here…the picture is of Hosea’s house, polluted with Gomer’s unfaithfulness.

The entire house, the place where Hosea and Gomer would live, wreaks of adultery. He feels it.  As he walks through his home where he had so much hope and filled with dreams for her and with her, he finds himself instead, feeling betrayed and dirty, and sick to the stomach, knowing that in this place, sex – casual – and not with him – has taken place.

God, did You walk through this Promised Land and again, smell that same stench of guilt, as you did when you sought out a shame-filled and hidden, Adam and Eve? Did grief well up in Your heart at love rejected, again? Did that deep gut-wrenching pain of betrayal hit you, again

   

   

The land is “guilty of the vilest adultery”. These were not just vile acts. They were the vilest! Wretched and offensive, the lowest form, defiled and debase, adultery. Words used because of the hideousness of what was being done, and the deep hurt it and offense it has caused. For Hosea, it is his prostitute wife taking pure, and beautiful intimacy, and making it cheap and dirty; and for You, it is Israel, Your treasure, Your people, turning away to other nations and their gods in “vilest adultery”. Israel is guilty just as Gomer is guilty. The land is guilty. The earth is guilty – all of humanity guilty.

Counted amongst humanity, I am shamefully connected to what we have given ourselves to. I chose to look into the ‘detestable practices’, those things that You said Israel was guilty of, and do some reading around the Canaanite religions they had ‘committed adultery’ with. I’m glad I did, but I so wish I hadn’t. I sense Your sorrow, God, alongside feeling deeply disturbed.

How? How God, could we fall so far into depravity? For me, I can choose to close the tab, not read any more of it, and to not think on it or look into it, and to stay in my own safe little world, oblivious if I want to. But You can’t do that. Our betrayal, our ruin, is continually and always before Your eyes – and Your heart. 

You don’t have the choice to look away and pretend it hasn’t and doesn’t happen like I can. You see it all and You know it all and feel the ugliness and pain of it all. It’s so perverted – so far from Your intention for created mankind. We have fallen far, far from Your Love –

Child sacrifice. In order to appease the Canaanite gods or to appeal to them for favour, Israel joined in the practices of this heathen nation – infants up to 6-year-olds were thrown to the fire. “They sacrificed their noble sons as an unblemished choice offering, or bought children from poor families, taking them into their homes, nurturing them as their own, but with the intention of offering them to their gods” (Roger Pearse).

Self-mutilation. A ritual in which Baal worshipers would slash themselves with swords and spears. The blood, the pain, and the mutilation were to show their earnestness in pleading before their god for an answer, for the forgiveness of sins, or mercy, or help. You would’ve given answer to their concerns. You had made the way for the forgiveness of their sins. You knew their needs before they even asked. You would’ve been their provider in every way, had they come to You.

Sex Orgies. The people were incited to indulge in sex of all kinds. Statues were erected in worship places with enlarged genitals to invoke sexual arousal. Rooms set apart in temples for sex. Prostitutes – male/female/children/animals – were dedicated to the gods for the people to perform unrestrained sexual acts with. The Canaanite god of fertility was worshiped in this way. It is said that sexual energy was stored by the gods during this time of reveling and used to produce fertility in crops and in people.

Idol-worship. “The blacksmith…makes into a god, his carved image. He falls down before it and worships it, prays to it and says, 
”Deliver me, for you are my god!” (Isaiah 44:12,17 NIV). To You, Lord, this is the ultimate insult. You reveal Yourself to a beloved people, but instead, they take a piece of wood or stone, carve it or mold it with their own hands and then declare it, God. To their idol, they add rituals and practices and dedicate themselves to it, seek to appease it and to appeal to it for their needs.

How offensive these things are. But what it ultimately says to You, is that the participation in the surrounding religions, is betrayal, “they do not acknowledge [Me]”  (Hosea 5:4 NIV). They have turned their backs on You for other lovers.

We are not far removed from the same insulting practices. Spiritually, emotionally, physically, we give ourselves to things in the appeal for the fulfillment of our needs, or to appease our own souls with stuff and practices and our ‘rights’. It may not look pagan in religious terms, but it is pagan, crude, blind, offensive and deceived in similarity.

Hosea verse 2, starts with, “Go, take to yourself” and ends in “in departing from the LORD”. To depart basically means, to go away from.  But it is more than just meaning distance between the two. It is willingly and casually walking away from all that was intended, and turning to things so vile and detestable, and in marriage terms, this means that “the two shall become one flesh” is torn apart.  “Take to yourself” is what should have been. “Depart” is the reality. The language of pain is so strong here! Every word in these verses, 2-3 symbolizes and represents the heartache You feel.

You are left behind, shaking Your head in disbelief. Does not a broken-hearted lover, ask the question, “Is my love not good enough? Could I have done more?” How can perfect love not be good enough?

Continued in next week’s blog…

 

[Hosea was a prophet of God to the nation of Israel. It is where much of this journey of love was awakened. His story is found in the Old Testament part of the Bible. Read more here.]

 

Call her “Not Loved”…

God, You are angry.

Anger, the emotion of betrayal. Anger from injustice. Anger from deep hurt. Anger aroused from what has become of the very best of Your creation.

It feels like the rest of Hosea 1, is Your expression of anger through the deep hurt and injustice You feel.

I have often wondered after reading this chapter in Hosea, about the love chapter of 1 Corinthians 13 of the New Testament. It is a chapter that gives the description of who You are as God is Love: love is patient, love is kind, love keeps no record of wrong, and so on. What I read here in Hosea, is that Love has the right to be angry. When perfect whole-hearted love is shown, when it has been patient and kind, never having exhausted its qualities of selflessness, protection, trustworthiness, and perseverance, and never ever failing to love … yet the recipient mistreats the Lover, betrays and rejects Him, shouldn’t love be angry? Not angry in a violent, out of control fury, more an indignation, which implies that feeling of deep and justified anger at having been so wronged. It does say in 1 Corinthians 13, that love “is not easily angered”, so it would not be erroneous to say that a lover, having given perfect love, has the right to be angry over the way the brokenness in someone cannot allow love to be received or returned. 

God, You name the children of Hosea and Gomer.

   

The first child, a son, is named Jezreel (Hosea 1:4, NIV) after a place of massacre. Bloodshed and great evil had been done in Jezreel (2 Kings 10, NIV). It is a place symbolizing how far Israel had gotten in departing from You. Hosea’s son was named “God will disperse” as a foretelling of what would eventually come to the house of Israel – becoming lost amongst the nations. Their wickedness had caused You so much grief and heartache.  This son’s name represented the evil acts of a nation who had departed from intimacy with You and prostituted themselves with other lovers.

Lo-Ruhamah is the second child born, a daughter named, “not loved”. She is given this name as the emotional reaction to the rejection, deep pain and anger You feel, and over the wickedness, and the continual return of this nation to its other lovers. For, You said, “I will no longer show love to the house of Israel or forgive them” (Hosea 1:6, NIV). Her name literally means to be ‘outside’ of the gentle, compassionate, affectionate love that You had for this people. Your original created intention was for Israel, and all humanity to be intimately included ‘inside’ Your love. How sad to name a child, “unloved” and “outside”.

The third child, Lo-Ammi, is another son. His name means, “you are not my people and I am not your God” (Hosea 1:9, NIV). His name would remind people everywhere he went, of the grief and anger You felt towards this nation and the sense of abandonment from a people who turned away from You and chose to not acknowledge You and all You had done for them. A sad name to bear!

The naming of these children saddens me when I compare it to my own experience. I remember the naming of our children. We spent many hours deciding on them. They were planned and named because we liked the name and because it had some kind of family significance. As the child grew within me, I remember spending hours thinking on who this one would be, what they would look like, what their personality might be, who they would grow up to become. I thought on the deep love I had for them – my hopes and dreams and desires for them. The good things I longed for, for them – and the desire to shield them from hurt and harm. I prayed that they would know their God. And as I caressed them within my pregnant body, I had thoughts of love and well-being and hope. Their name became their identity long before they were born. Never once did it cross my mind to name my child to represent despair or brokenness or anger. Never once did I even consider giving them a name that they would carry with them always, that would speak of the heartache of the one that named them. I wanted good things and health and happiness to follow my children, not bitterness and sorrow. My children were conceived out of love and were named with expectation and joy and hopes and dreams.

I know this is not the way it has been for all children born. Throughout history, names have been given to represent the circumstances and situations that the child has been conceived and born into – some with hope for a better future in mind, but many out of the despair they felt and the terrible experiences that have been faced.

I have a beautiful friend who went through a marriage breakup. If that weren’t hard enough, she found out she had become pregnant to her husband right on the eve of the breakup. She lived through that pregnancy fearful that she would not love this child born in a time of great heartache and distress. This child grew within her in the hardest, most confusing, angry, desperate time of her life, and in many ways, the child represented the feelings and situation she found herself in. She gave her child a name which means “Love”, in the hope and desire that the feelings of love would follow the naming of her child once she saw her. And it did. This little girl is the delight of her mother’s life. Precious. Beautiful. Adored. From despair, fear and heartache came something, someone, beautiful, and greatly loved.

How broken the mother or father of a child must be to give a new life a name that represents heartache, where there are only feelings of despair and bitterness in the conception and birth of the child. New life represents hope and future, but to You, God, the birth of a new generation bought only further hurt and pain. Every moment of every day, these three children (these children of unfaithfulness – Hosea 2:4, NIV) bore the names that came from a heart totally broken, from despair and anger over abused love. Every day they walked, played, grew, and lived life with names that spoke of the emotional pain, sorrow, grief, and anguish You felt over Your people. God, this is an incredibly sad symbolic naming of the three children. That because of great wickedness and departing from You, because of the prostitution of a nation with other gods instead of intimacy with You, and the pursuit of other lovers over You, You call this people who were once invited to be included in intimacy with You, now outside of that invitation, “not loved”. (What would it be like to be outside of Your love?) And You declare that they are no longer Yours nor are You, theirs. It’s the response of a God, who is Love, whose action of love is incredibly patient and forgiving, kind and merciful, and yet is so broken-hearted, that in the injustice of it all, You respond in a very, what I consider, human-like way –

Don’t we feel the same angry response when we are unjustly treated and our love abused? God, You hurt this way too! We would want retaliation for the injustice. Out of deep hurt, we declare that we will no longer love them and that the pain they have inflicted and caused on us is too much to forgive. And, that we will no longer have anything to do with them. You hurt deeply too! It is an angry response, but not the true emotion of the heart where love is the root of this anger felt.

Yet, O thank You God that You are true and faithful to Your character, and You rename these children, “Yet the Israelites will be like the sand on the seashore, which cannot be measured or counted” (Hosea 1:10, NIV). In the place where it was said to them, “‘You are not my people,’ they will be called ‘children of the living God’. The people of Judah and the people of Israel will come together; they will appoint one leader and will come up out of the land, for great will be the day of Jezreel. Say of your brothers, ‘My people,’ and of your sisters, ‘My loved one.”’ (Hosea 1:11-2:1, NIV 1984).

Yet. This just provides my soul with such relief, for without it I too am completely lost to wretchedness. Yet! You are committed to me no matter what! Yet! You are faithful even when I am not! Yet! Your Love is greater than Your hurt! Yet! Your love cannot be withheld. Yet! Your anger lasts only for a moment (Psalm 30:5, NIV). In the same breath where it was said, “You are not my people”; You say, “they will be called Sons of the Living God”. My people. My loved ones. And Jezreel becomes a place where the marriage of Israel and Judah to their God takes place once more in a future time. God, You take that place which has been vile and ugly, and a people who had been dispersed among the nations, and reclaim the place and the people by Your grace and Your love, to You once more.

O, thank You, God, that Your love, loves beyond my unfaithfulness. That You draw me back despite me returning to prostitution time after time. That You declare me Yours though I continually depart from You and rip myself away from the unity and intimacy I vowed to You. That You love me despite my vilest adultery against You. I hurt You, God. I am one who carelessly and casually flaunts with other, counterfeit, lesser lovers who don’t care for me as You do. Instead of my eyes being toward You, my Bridegroom, I constantly look to other lovers.

Yet…yet…yet…

O thankfully, You reach down and reach out instead of withdrawing. There is nothing I, like Gomer, like Israel, like all humanity, deserve in this relationship. I am the whore. I am the harlot. I am the promiscuous one, I am Gomer, prostituting myself with many other lovers. You are the faithful one.

I sense today the pain – gut-wrenching, broken-hearted pain I cause You. Though I am thankful that You remain faithful and call me “Loved” and “Yours”, I know I too keep returning to other lovers for I am ruined and totally broken.

Yet…yet…yet, You keep inviting me back into Your love. How desperately ruined I am! How wonderfully loved I am! How faithful You are! This is Your story. The story of a God, heartbroken by our ruin, yet who is moved by love and does what it takes to redeem us!

Continued in next week’s blog…

 

[Hosea was a prophet of God to the nation of Israel. It is where much of this journey of love was awakened. His story is found in the Old Testament part of the Bible. Read more here.]

 

The Tragedy of Hosea

I love theatre. It’s rooted in the love of a good story. I love that feeling of excited anticipation – the cacophony of the orchestral instruments as they do their final tuning, the crowd noise quietens, the house lights dim, the stage lights brighten, the opening music plays, and the curtains part – all together in an anticipated symphony as the first act begins. There’s that sense of nervous excitement as the actor approaches the stage: will those very first impressionable lines succeed or fail to set the scene memorably? Then there’s the costumes, the sets, the actors themselves…oh! and the comedy, those acts, and actors entrusted with the task of amusing interjection – something light and farcical in nature – to entertain the crowd or to relieve the tension of the serious moment. The story unfolds, the characters are loved or hated, as prescribed. We are all taken along the journey of the tale, encouraged to laugh, induced to cry, moved to anger or passion, the sense of adventure or conflict felt, all at the appropriate moments – together participating in the rising action, the climax, and finally, the resolution. All is rounded up, finished off, concluded and resolved. The play ends in final celebration, excitement, and happiness – the audience purposefully left on an elated high, exit the theatre with “bravo”, “what a good show!”, “didn’t she/he do well?” Flowers, praise, hugs, and handshakes are given.

As the scene of Hosea chapter 2 opens, I feel intrusive as I watch on. Like I have entered a private room and am witnessing the monologue of a grief-stricken lover. I shouldn’t be here in this moment. I am trespassing on something so sacred, something so intimately private – yet I can’t turn aside. The grief is so powerfully voiced and performed that I am drawn to witness its expression. I must stay hidden behind the curtains, lest I expose the actor in this most intense moment. I sense I am not watching an artist at work, I am witness to the very soul of this one. This is not a play…

Yet, I watch as if it were a play, the words spoken – this Lover, this Husband, this God, with His head in His hands moving from anger, injustice and betrayal, to love, sorrow and compassion – then back again to anger…an up and down roller coaster of one who has been deeply grieved. The hurt of betrayal competing furiously with the deep love He has for her. Wanting to see her hurt, as He is hurting on the one hand, then wanting to wrap His arms around her and bring her back to Himself. Going from one emotion to another, to another, to another…

If I were new to this story, I would wonder at the one who has so severely torn apart the heart of this Lover. What could she have done to so equally enrage and destroy with sorrow, this Lover? The suffering of His heart is testament to the degree of love He has for her. It must be perfect love that has been given, that the love lost or the betrayal or the rejection of it is perfectly destroying his soul with such fierce grief. What other cause could account for this degree of sorrow?

This is indeed a tragedy. In theater, a tragedy is defined as the dramatic composition, often in verse, dealing with a serious or somber theme, typically involving a great person who has experienced downfall and utter destruction. This is Hosea’s tragedy. This is the story of God.

 

 

 

 

 

A Monologue

Act One 

Scene 1

Hosea

Sitting in sorrow.
Pacing in anger.
Crying.
Raging.
Loving.
Hurting.
Grieving.
Gut-wrenching pain of the heart.

[Oh God…!!]

He paces. Back and forth. Back and forth. Angry. Enraged. Irritated. His breathing strong and rapid.

Damn her! Damn her!
She is not my wife
I am not her husband!
Ohhhh…I know that look –
She lifts her chin, tilts her head, looks that look…that look of a whore in business…
Drawing her lovers to her breast

If that’s how it is to be, let her be stripped
Let all her lovers see her naked – bared for all to see
Let everything be taken from her –
Everything I have given her

Let her be like the desert
A place desolate and barren and thirsty –
O desert, I say, slay her with thirst
Let no water be found
Nor satisfaction, nor gratification

I will not love those children
Children born in disgrace by this unfaithful woman
She who says, “I will go back to my other lovers,
They will give me all the food and water, beautiful clothes and perfumes and wine I could want.”

I won’t let her find her way back
Everywhere she turns I will block her way
She will chase her lovers, but not catch them
She will look for them, but not find them
Then maybe she will say, “I will go back to my husband,
At least I had what I needed there.”

Grieving
It was who gave her food and clothing and perfumes
It was who lavished her with beautiful jewellery

Angry
But when she comes, I will take away everything…the food and the wine –
I will take back the clothes I gave her
I will take back everything
Everything that I gave her to cover her nakedness and the shame of her prostitution
I will expose her for what she is
Her lovers will want nothing to do with her
There will be no more celebrations
No more parties where she dresses in her fine clothes and jewellery and goes after her lovers,

Grieving
…but me she forgot…

Scene 2

Then,
Falling to the chair. Head down. Head in hands. Sorrowful. Desperate for her. His passion growing in intensity.

No! No! I love her!
I will win her back
Though she has nothing
I will speak tenderly to her
Shower her with gifts – again
Though this has been a place, troubled and dark, I will bring her back to Me
She will find hope – again
Yes, she will walk through this darkened doorway with sun beyond its frames
She will sing – again
Like she did in her innocent days

Excited
And I will say,
Call me “husband”. Call me “lover”
No longer call me “master, the one who I must serve”

Determined
I will remove all the obstacles of love between us
I will take away everything that took her continually back to her other lovers
I will betroth her to me forever
I will marry her – again – a marriage filled with goodness and of love and compassion
I will betroth her to me in faithfulness

Oh, I can see it now –
She will soak – fully bathe – in the depth of my love for her.

Excitment rising
Yes! Even the earth will see and respond to this love I have for her
Sun and rain will bless the earth
The earth will dance with new grain and wine and oil
All creation will celebrate with us in our love, one for the other
And she will reside in our home – and stay here!
Put down her roots here – with me
No more will she return to her lovers

Calming
I will love her
She, who was not loved
And I will call her mine
Give her my name
– She who had no place to belong and who had no name –
And she will say – “You are my God”

Resolutely,
That is what I will do
I will win her back
Love will win her back to me.

The End.

_________________

God, though this is a terribly sad discourse, etched with such pain, it too is very beautiful. It displays that depth of emotion I hadn’t understood You possessed before. A heart-stricken Lover, angry, desperate, impassioned for the love He has for His bride. If it is true that “The more a man loves, the more he suffers. The sum of possible grief for each soul is in proportion to its degree of perfection”, then Your grief over our love lost is immeasurable, just like Your love for us is immeasurable. Your pain is as great in intensity as Your Perfect Love for us is.  The separation, the tearing at Your heart in our departure from You is piercing and fierce. It seems that this roller coaster of emotions – the anger, the grief, the compassion, the desire You experience – is repeated over and over throughout this book of Hosea. This is what this ‘tragedy’ speaks to me – though humanity has wandered hopelessly far away, we are not lost to You. Your love will not allow it.

Continued in next week’s blog…

 

[Hosea was a prophet of God to the nation of Israel. It is where much of this journey of love was awakened. His story is found in the Old Testament part of the Bible. Read more here.]