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.]

 

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.]

 

Intimate with chocolate cake…

Go, love your wife again though she is…“intimate with chocolate cake”.

What?!

“The Lord said to me, “Go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another man and is an adulteress. Love her as the Lord loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods and love the sacred raisin cakes.”” (Hosea 3:1, NIV, italics mine)

How do you love again when over and over love is betrayed? How do you love her when she is an adulteress, a prostitute? Perhaps you can forgive the past offense, but what if she continues to pursue her other lovers? And what if her lover was chocolate cake? The absurdity of this…

Hosea is to love Gomer like You love Israel – committed, unconditional, faithful, unfailing – though Israel keeps returning to other lovers, and to “raisin cakes”, go figure! There’s a seriousness about the way Israel keeps returning, unfaithfully to other lovers…lovers like other gods, living in the defiled ways the other nations do, pagan rituals instead of worship, immoral sexual practices, etc…and then raisin cakes? Is this serious or a joke? It could mean that Israel loved to offer food to Baal and their other idols, or loved to eat what had been offered them. It could mean wine as in the celebrations held at the temple feasts, but one person – and he must’ve been thinking the ridiculousness of it like I was, says this:

“This probably has more to do in Hosea with Israel turning to the things they love, instead of God who they should love – and other women and raisin cakes being two examples. One adultery and the other just a food item. God’s comment/remark is almost comical in that he is telling Hosea that the Israelites will once again go and follow after women (gods) and a small tasty cake.” (Stack Exchange)

God, it seems like You really are remarking on the ludicrousy of it. How ridiculous it is when we compare Your Love and what You offer in relationship to what Israel – what we, what I keep hankering for and returning to – a piece of sweet cake! Why?

Why are we so seemingly fearful of Your love, and choose instead, cake?

When we have been hurt by love, broken by the totality of humanity’s ruin, each on a haunted search for love, but each coming to it with the brokenness of self-interest and self-motivation, desperate to have the question of our value answered and our love needs met, we instead, continually just hurt one another. It is the reason, though ludicrous and utterly sad, that we will turn to other lovers – lovers that do not demand vulnerability of us – “A great cup of coffee cannot reject us” (Journey Answers). A coffee, or a raisin cake, a bottle of wine, a pair of new shoes, a sweet piece of chocolate cake, a hobby, a habit, a career, become our lovers. These lovers are safe. They do not expose us. When love fails us, when we are broken by it again, we turn to cake.

Oh, chocolate cake…!

   

We turn to cake for emotional fulfillment. Something such as cake (absurd!) can draw us in for fulfillment. Though Your Love provides and meets all our needs and can so deeply and completely satisfy us, we think it will be as human love has been to us. That it will hurt us as human love has. Its so ludicrous, God You laugh! (or so it seems), but cake is one of our many lovers!

“Cake is the answer, no matter the question.”

“You can’t buy happiness, but you can buy cake, and that’s kind of the same thing.”

“When all else fails, eat cake.”

“Cake is my happy place.”

“No day is so bad it can’t be fixed with a cupcake.”

“Dear Diamond, we all know who really is a girl’s best friend. Yours sincerely, Chocolate Cake.”

“All you need is love, and maybe a piece of cake.”

“I want someone to look at me the way I look at chocolate cake.”

“Cake is happiness! If you know the way of the cake, you know the way of happiness! If you have a cake in front of you, you should not look any further for joy!” (C. JoyBell C.)

A diary entry –

04/18/2008 I didn’t want it for hunger… it was just to numb out. Later…I had to put the brownies away.  I need them out of sight.  I’ve been snitching some every time I pass by.  Sometimes I feel so empty inside… and food “fills” that void.  But not today… I put them away.

04/23/2008 I’m done… I feel like giving up!  Just throwing in the towel!  Why is this such a problem for about myself.  It’s like I’m searching to fill my “void”… but nothing fills it.  I want to feel complete.  (Overcome binge eating)

God, I know I’m guilty. Cake is definitely one of my lovers.

Cake, its sweetness, its forbidden fruit quality is temporary fulfillment and indulgence in a rebellious act or in combat to the stress-filled, needy for love, broken world around me. I’ll eat it when I am unhappy. I’ll eat it when I feel unloved. I’ll eat it when I am feeling empty inside. I will savour its flavour as if it were nourishment for my soul. When I am in control, when I am happy, when everything is going well, I can be strong and resist this lover. But as soon as the littlest of stress enters my world, or I am feeling low or empty, or when I desperately need love, I run to this love – I indulge and find relief – even if just for a moment – in this casual lover of mine.

Viktor Frankl says, “When a person can’t find a deep sense of meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure”. Saint Paul says something similar, “They will…love pleasure rather than God” (2 Timothy 3:4, NLT). Pleasure such as cake! Cake is safe. Love is not!

You know this about us. Yet, Your love persists. So great is Your love for us that you continue to love though we cannot seem to receive it, and though we reject it for other lovers, lovers such as cake.

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.]

One man’s junk…

… is another man’s treasure.

Israel’s is a story of a people whose once former glory is lost. They, now worn and worthless, are tossed out from the surrounding nations –  yet they are treasure in the heart of their God (Deuteronomy 14:2, NIV).

In their story is a parallel scenario, of a woman, Gomer –

Having been the object of men’s desire, she too is now of little use, her glory fading. She – Gomer – was the Alabaster Vase – beautiful to behold. The Fragrance of Oud – heady and enticing.  The Mandu Padouk – the costly chest filled with treasure. The Courtier – beyond the comparison of all other courtiers, and afforded only by the wealthy.

From commanding the world around her, came the anxiety and failure to hide what was quietly leaking – the years of cosmetics to maintain an unblemished smooth complexion, was now competing with the tiredness of keeping up the facade of being the prize to claim. So, it was to their advantage to allow her to be given to Hosea as wife, and to let her slip out of their business quietly – their treasure of the past, the best of her gone, conveniently now betrothed. Her marriage gave a measure of reputation to their trade. It said to their clients there was chattel of reputable worth to be had, and more yet to be bought, and always there would be another to take her place.

At the start, it was a flattering relief for Gomer to be ‘married’ to a man – just one man. It replaced the exhaustion that accompanied the keeping of many men. The act of giving to each that sense of singular possession, had become tiring. Perhaps surprisingly then, not long into their ‘arrangement’ of marriage, she turned back. The kindness and love of Hosea frightened her. Never from the brutality that she had sometimes experienced, but because she could not deal with the fear of this thing called genuine love, foreign to her heart. Oh, she had had genuine from men before, genuine until morning appeared, but this man’s love was different, and the shields she had in place to protect her heart were crumbling. Once she was the treasure auctioned, passed from this one to that with the exchange of a great deal of money; now she was the object of a foreign kind of love – treasured deep within Hosea’s heart! With the inability to receive his love, she fled to Another Man, “Go, show love to your wife again, though she is loved by another man, and is an adulteress…” (Hosea 3:1, NIV).

As Another Man’s illicit ‘beloved’, she was desired only to satisfy his carnal appetite, used for nothing more than sexual pleasure for this man one moment, then thrown out of the room and assigned to the tasks of ‘maid’ the next.  Now and then, for the small sum he could hustle for a fallen-from-glory prostitute, she was given by her procurer to others, who’s boast was only in the knowledge that they had had her – the girl who once fetched top dollar.

How ironic that this one so treasured, so precious, so loved by her husband, Hosea, had become “junk”, of little use, of no value to Another Man – her other lover – yet she had turned her back on the sweet love of Hosea, for something like that of a slave.

She had lost her former value, for we read Another Man readily sold her back to her husband Hosea, at a price less than that of a common slave, “So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and about a homer and a lethek of barley” (Hosea 3:2, NIV). Hosea obeys not only You, God, but his heart. He “Go[es], show[s] love to [his] wife again…love[s] her as the LORD loves”.

God, Your love for Israel was an active, “Go!” yet tender, sentimental love, “as the LORD loves”. In the Hebrew, it suggests that this word for love could be read as a lovesick love. The dictionary would describe this kind of love, as a lover having yearning for his beloved, yet experiencing deep affliction over the absence of her, loving her though she does not love in return, bearing a sense of misery, and unhappiness because of this unrequited love, making this lovesick lover behave in ways that were abnormal.

God, is it not ‘abnormal’ to love and to show love over and over and over again to one who continually walks away, flirts with casual lovers, does not show love in return, cannot receive the love given her, cannot be vulnerable or intimate in love? Yet this love, and the not-considered-usual-behaviour of someone, that You ask Hosea to show Gomer, is the love You have for Israel. Israel was Your prostitute bride, as Gomer was Hosea’s. Surely, this behaviour, this love, is only possible if it is a Perfect Love – that loves anyway, that forgives, that is moved by the plight of the one loved who is deeply treasured. Buying back what You already own, what was already Yours, too, is not normal behaviour, is it? Were there not some legal rights of marriage already had here? But this lover does what it takes, and if it means paying the bride price a second time, or paying the sum of a prostitute, again, he is willing, as You were willing.

The other lovers pursued by Israel – the other nations, a wooden idol, a cake, or a cup of coffee (Blog: “Intimate with Chocolate Cake”) – did not care about Israel as You did. In the same way, Another Man and the men he hired her out to, did not care about Gomer as Hosea did. They could not! Though they demanded certain acts of servility or feigned attraction, there was no love returned by a piece of wood, or a piece of cake, or a man who was only interested in what he could get from her.

These lovers woo us in with claims of love and fulfillment but do not care for our souls, as the true Lover of our Souls does.

   

Hosea instructs Gomer, whom he has bought back from her indifferent lovers, to stay with him, “Then I told her, “You are to live with me many days; you must not be a prostitute or be intimate with any man, and I will behave the same way toward you.”” (Hosea 3:3, NIV). Still, she is not choosing to freely love and be loved by him. She is doing as she is told, like the slave she has become. He tells her she is not to be with any other man, knowing she will still be unfaithful. To her, unfaithful, casual love has been all she has known, it is a safe love for her, even though it has been from lovers who only used her, that he had brought her back from, paying for her freedom. The destruction of these other lovers breaks his heart, when, what he has for her is a compassionate, kind and sympathetic love. Hosea knows she will likely return to these lovers, but he makes vows of commitment to her and to his heart, again – to be faithful in this relationship, again.

As I write this last paragraph, my broken-by-human-love mind immediately seeks to accuse Hosea.

If he just loved her more.

He must not be meeting her needs.

If his love were genuine, she’d stay.

If he were more romantic.

If he just sat down and listened to her.

If he did more for her.

If he told her she was beautiful every day.

Perhaps he was just not right for her.

You can’t put demands on love.

You cannot make her stay by forbidding her to leave.

My thoughts come from broken human experiences of love. Hosea’s love is a picture of Your love, God, whose love is perfect and complete and enough. It was all she needed. There is no greater love than Yours! The problem was in the receiving of Your love. The problem was with Gomer, as it is with us. Human love, the ruin of sin, the brokenness of this world had deceived her, and has deceived us so terribly, and ruined us so thoroughly, that it is us that cannot receive this love. Gomer had a slave-like, piece of property, prostitute mentality. Though slaves can be set free, they don’t know what it is to be free, how to live freely, think freely, make free-person decisions…so often they just go back to the enslaving safety and familiarity, and of their long learned and lived out identity – that of a slave, that of someone who is used – and not that of a beloved wife.

Why could Gomer not receive Hosea’s love?

Why can I not receive Your love, God?

If Gomer, if I, were to let ourselves be loved by this love – I know I don’t have adequate words for it, but it would be all we needed. It would be all I long for. All, complete, total, perfect in every way in fulfilling me. Meeting my deepest needs. Ceasing my desire for the pursuit of other lovers. Healing the deep hurts I have. Tearing down the walls I protect myself with. Satisfying the thirst I am slain with, that endless pursuit – to be beautiful, to be wanted, to be needed, to be of worth, to be loved, to be delighted in, to be treasured. Filling me up until I feel I lack nothing and can achieve anything. This love is exactly what my humanity craves. It is what can return me to my God-design, my true origin, and purpose – and therefore fully satisfying. I was created for love – Your love – and without it, I am in this place of continual return, in slave-like fashion, to prostitution and promiscuity, to casual sex with many lovers, to lovers who are mostly indifferent towards me, to those can’t love me the way I need to be loved.

Why, like Gomer can I not receive it? What will it take?

Verse 3 literally reads, “”thou shalt sit,” solitary and as a widow, quiet and sequestered; not going after others, as heretofore, but waiting for him…Afterward, shall the children of Israel return…Before, she had diligently sought her false gods. Now, in the end she shall as diligently seek God and His grace, as she had heretofore sought her idols and her sins.”” (Barnes’ notes on Hosea 3:3). As Hosea “loves her as the Lord loves”, a day will come when Gomer will understand, her deep hurt will be healed, and she will be able to receive and return his love.

Could it be true God, that You treasure me? Really, am I treasured? This is like hope to the very depths of my soul. Though I like Gomer, keep returning to other lovers who do not and cannot treat me like the treasure You do, having too, been brought back from these indifferent destructive lovers of mine, Your persistent, Perfect Love will one day win my heart – for it is what Perfect Love only can do – and I will willingly turn to You, willingly love You, willingly desire You, willingly be Your betrothed.

Oh God, love on! Love as You love and let Your love thoroughly redeem me …

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.]

 

Interlude…

 

def –An intervening space that comes between two parts. A short dramatic piece, especially of a light or farcical character, formerly introduced between the parts or acts of a play.

Not too long ago I found myself upset, frustrated, and out of sorts. I’m not much of one for excessive verbal expression of myself, but the emotion inside wanted release and so I heard a verbiage of ranting and raving, coming from the inside of me to the outside. The unfortunate receiver defended and fought back with their frustration at me, but I didn’t intend for it to be an attack on them, I just needed someone to listen to my heart. I think this is what much of the book of Hosea is about, and I am glad God, that You had a prophet who heard and wrote down what You needed to say because Your heart needed to find expression too.

Either side of what I have come to know as the interludes I find in Hosea is chapter after chapter of the Israelites stumbling in their sin – their many sins are obstacles, tripping them up, hindering them from a relationship with You. It mostly reads like they don’t want to turn to You. They are arrogant and willful in their disobedience (Hosea 5:5, NIV). They have voluntarily hardened their hearts to You. They have known You but have made the choice to turn away. And when I read that “they couldn’t return to You” (Hosea 5:4, MSG). “Their sinful deeds would not permit them” (Hosea 5:4, NIV), and I consider the ruin and lostness of humanity, I sense the tension between our free will and our inability to return to You. Perhaps our inability makes us arrogant. Perhaps it makes us more willfully disobedient. I can’t help it so I’ll just do it anyway. Perhaps our rebellious attitude is just further evidence that we cannot turn from our sin without Your enabling. That it is so great and so thorough, that only a Lover with Perfect Love, and a radical Salvation from it – in order to destroy its power over us – is what can enable us to have a change in free-will, desire, and ability to turn to You. But this is all burdensome to the reader. It’s hard to hear.

In Hosea, I hear the tensions of justice and love. How painful must it be to live with an equal balance of these. You are both just and love. Justice wants to make wrongs right. For the victim to be acknowledged and compensated. For the falsely accused to have retribution and their reputation and name cleared. For evil to be punished. For justice! Love separates the crime and the sinfulness from the offender – and sees the person. Love sees through the exterior to the heart that has been ruined by sin, and love longs to heal and restore, to forgive, to bring close and to show intimacy. How do you balance these two, God? Is it part of the pain You feel towards humanity?  

Yet throughout the book of Hosea, come the intervening spaces of a gracious God. You speak of heartache, You reveal our ruin, You talk of Your anger and judgment, and in between all of these, You stop –

   

An interlude is generally light in nature, according to its definition. The book of Hosea would’ve been heavy and somber for the people of Israel to hear. If they had the heart to hear it, the moments of interlude which were light in comparison, leaked of Your love and faithfulness to this people, and would’ve provided them a sense of relief, alleviating the distress of Your charge against them, abruptly changing the mood, reducing the intensity of it all.

Traditionally in a play, the word interlude was not only light, but it was also farcical in nature, meaning ludicrous or absurd. I can’t help but think how ludicrous and absurd Your love is for humanity. It is clearly shown in the story of Hosea, just how beyond reason and contrary to all common sense it is that You keep on loving despite the vile acts, the prostitution with other lovers over You, the rejection of Yourself, the complete ruin that we are. Your love just keeps on loving. The interludes here should’ve caused Israel, should cause us, to shake our heads in wonder at the marvel of it, and our hearts to turn in acknowledgment and gratitude to You.

We see these interludes –

In Hosea 1:9-10 “…In the place where it was said to them, “You are not my people”, they will be called ‘sons of the living God’”.

In Hosea 2, we see a change in the play-like script of a heart-hurt God where though You are angry, Your love and grace for this people is abruptly changed to desire for her again.

In Hosea 6:1-3, is the interlude where Hosea who calls Your people to return, reminds them of Your graciousness. He will heal…He will bind up our wounds…He will revive usHe will restore us…He will invite us to live in His presence…He will appear…He will come to us…He will refresh and fill and satisfy.

In Hosea 11:8, following several chapters of You speaking of Israel’s utter ruin, Your heart leaks with longing for them “How can I give you up…? How can I hand you over…? …all My compassion is aroused”.

In Hosea 11:4, Your final words to this people, “I will heal their waywardness and love them freely”.

How sweet are Your amazing interludes? It is almost as if You can hardly bear to speak of anger and judgment without feeling compelled to inject often Your “yet” (this is how it was, but this is how it will be) to humanity – the grace, the love, the desire, the longing for us.

 

Your love is not good enough!

“God, Your love is not good enough!” Man.

Buried deep within this story of Hosea, is where Your heart is able to finally and honestly find expression of it’s deepest pain. It comes out amongst all the offense felt. You have said things hard to hear, but true, yet here is revealed the root of Your pain, “Like Adam, they have broken the covenant – they were unfaithful to me there” (Hosea 6:7, NIV). It must be the most somber, heartbreaking verse of Hosea, speaking the heart of all You are trying to say in this book, perhaps of all history. We have said through our words and our actions that Your love is not good enough. Right from the outset, we have rejected Your love, we have betrayed You. It is the heartache of the Garden of Eden.

The Garden. Eden means “delight”. The place of splendor, revealing Your glorious and majestic power, Your beauty and Your love. You delighted in the creation of this Garden. You delighted in all of its inhabitants. You delighted in the anticipation of relationship with the best of creation, mankind. You gave all of Yourself to this place, and to these ones declared, “very good”.

The Garden. The place where immortal God would dwell with mortal humanity in perfect union. Created for pleasure in relationship, these, the most complex of all creation were beings capable of mutual emotional connection. Though they had a beginning, they, created with souls, would have no end. For eternity they would commune with You and with each other. You would find delight in closeness with them. You would dwell with them and walk with them each day. Here in this Garden, You introduced all of who You are – Father, Son, and Spirit. Having been in perfect unity for eternity, You chose this moment to create humanity, for inclusion. Affording them intimacy in Your already perfect relationship, to give freely and abundantly of Your perfect love, firstly to Adam and Eve, then to all who would come from them. What was an intimate Three in One, was thrown wide open to embrace these ones to be part of everything You are. You didn’t have to, You chose to.

The Garden. It is a place of Your provision, where lovingly You met their entire needs – physical, emotional, spiritual, social needs – all fully satisfied in this Garden with You.

The Garden. You gave, and You provided. You cherished their existence. Shared Your creative wonders. Gave them purpose and responsibility, to rule over and care for this precious world You gifted to them.

But…

…they betrayed You.

The Garden. The beginning of humanity’s ruin happened here, and although it was just an apple, at the heart of the eating of this fruit was the betrayal of You and the rejection of Your Love. We regarded all You are and all You gave, as unsatisfactory, lacking and inadequate.

   

Everything You had created, everything You had given, the inclusion into intimacy that You offered, had been rejected. Your love, a completely satisfying, lacking nothing, perfect inclusive oneness, was declared not enough. God, You were abandoned by us.

Your heart is broken! How can this love be not enough?

All loves I have experienced do not and cannot in any way compare to that perfect, pure, unrestrained, intimate, inclusion and oneness of the love of You, three perfect beings. It is impossible to define this love and oneness of being that You are. Saint Paul tries. He describes it like this as he calls us to be like You, “being of the same mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose” (Philippians 2:2, NASB) 

Same mind – You, Father, Son, and Spirit, think the same
Same love – You love the same
Same spirit – You are the same
Same purpose – You work towards the same things
A perfect, unified, thinking and loving and doing.

You invite Israel into this oneness, talking about it this way, “I will give them singleness of heart and action” (Jeremiah 32:39, NIV). You offer them inclusion into this Perfect Love and togetherness that You experience every moment of eternity, but they, and we, rejected You, and in doing so, became utterly ruined. Our rejection and our ruin broke Your heart.

We are now in continual aggressive pursuit of intimate satisfaction because we were created for Your love and for inclusion in Your love, but having walked away, we have become so ruined that we pursue it in every other place than its Origin and Source. Your heart mourns the loss, “When I found Israel, it was like finding grapes in the desert, when I saw your fathers, it was like seeing the early fruit on the fig tree” (Hosea 9:10, NIV). Sweet and refreshing to a parched and thirsty mouth. The promise of delicious fruit – times of sweet fellowship together – pictures used to describe how You see us, and what You long for, are beautiful and innocent and pure, but they sadly turn dark as they highlight the comparison of what we have become.

“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). Promises of love, a place of belonging, inclusion, intimacy, faithfulness, and commitment are all treated with contempt, disregarded, in order that they, we, might do as our lust-filled, self-seeking minds and bodies please.

You have been betrayed. Your love is seen as not good enough. How can a Perfect Love be not good enough? You are left shaking Your head in disbelief and in grief, asking of Yourself the question, how could this happen?

Though revealed here is our betrayal of You, Your passion and Your pursuit since the Garden is to have us come back into the intimacy of Your perfectly, satisfying love.

You open your arms (in fact they have never been closed), and invite us back. It is what Perfect Love does. You are not a man, You are God, and You will be faithful and true to who You are. To this truth, is my soul’s truest exclamation, Phew! I find here that sense of utter relief! Though my sin is great, though I return repeatedly to the same things, though I am ruined by sin, though I prostitute myself to other lovers willingly and waywardly, You do not give up on me. You do not treat me as my sin deserves. Your anger toward my sin is turned away, and in its place is a great compassion, a moving of Your heart towards this sin-filled loved one who is lost. You understand that in my humanity, I am absolutely corrupt and couldn’t turn to You. Any hint of impending judgment or doom is removed and I can rest here, knowing I am safe in Your love, because –

If You have not given up on Israel, You will not give up on me.

The human reaction would be to walk away. To give up. It’s too hard, They don’t deserve it, I’ve given it my best shot, That’s it, I’m done. Or in anger, demand justice for the offense and restitution for the pain caused.

Oh, I am so glad You are God, and not man that You would say,

“How can I give you up, Ephraim?
How can I hand you over, Israel?
How can I treat you like Admah?
How can I make you like Zeboiim?
My heart is changed within me; all my compassion is aroused.
I will not carry out my fierce anger,
Nor will I devastate Ephraim again.
For I am God, and not a man – the Holy One among you” (Hosea 11:8-9, NIV). 

These are incredibly beautiful words. You will be true to Yourself. Where other loves give up on me, Your love will never fail. Where mankind’s love would walk away, Your love holds on tight. Where people’s love would rage in anger, Your love continues in kindness and tenderness. Where their love would demand justice and would destroy, Your love forgives and gives second chances. Though Your heart grieves my ruin and the way I keep pursuing other lovers, and my rejection of the Perfect Love You offer, that same Perfect Love cannot abandon me or fail or forsake me.

Perfect Love sent a prophet who loved his prostitute bride with a faithful, unfailing love. Perfect Love continued to love though she returned again and again to her other lovers. Perfect Love paid the price of injustice and the anger of God towards sin, so that this Gomer, this Israel, this humanity, could know Love, and be redeemed and reclaimed and brought into it again – the place of completely satisfying love that we were created for, but which was robbed from us, and us from You, in the Garden.

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.]