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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.]

 

 

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.]

 

 

 

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.]

 

Ruined…

Hosea 4 onwards, is the writing of a scribe, the voice of a prophet, telling of the offense felt by a God, a Lover, who has been wronged. As the people murmur among themselves about what could this picture of Hosea and his prostitute wife mean, You, God, send out its message. As it spreads throughout the nation, town after town hear Your words, but stubbornly refuse to receive the heart of it.

A disgruntled God is their indignant retort. They have turned their backs on you.

I imagine Hosea, pen in hand at the ready as You tell him Your story. Relaying case after case of offense felt by You through the ways that this nation, Your beloved, have walked away from Perfect Love, and sought the affections of their casual lovers. Perhaps You pace as You dictate Your words. Perhaps You hang Your head in sorrow. Perhaps Your voice rises often in anger. Perhaps there is often a heavy silence. Perhaps Hosea shrinks back quietly into the shadows as he obediently transposes Your emotion into words. He understands the pain felt. He too has had a prostitute bride. In the writing of Your words, perhaps Hosea pens them with as much of his own deep emotional pain, as he does Yours.

The hours spent in Your presence listening and transcribing Your message becomes heavy. The bleakness and blackness of offense felt is disparaging. Hosea feels the heavyheartedness of it all – Israel has been ruined. A special treasure lost. Having given themselves unabashedly and wantonly to her other lovers, she has been all but used up and tossed out, yet she still persists in the pursuit of any lover other than You. Hosea wades through the drudgery of Your telling of it. The revelation of their ruin is labourious and painstaking. He cannot escape the gloom of ruin felt as You speak.

Arduously he writes as if lifting one foot in front of the other in squelching mud, in the grim reality that sin has ruined this people completely. 

Years later in the New Testament, St Paul tells his version of the ruin of humanity – “It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community. I could go on” (Galatians 5:19-21, MSG).

And down through the years to our own generation, comedian Russell Brand recently said this, “There’s a famous quote: ‘Every man who knocks on a brothel door, he’s looking for God Crackhouses and these dens of suffering and illicit activity, they’re all people trying to feel good, trying to feel connected. People are trying to escape…humanity is (metaphorically) knocking on a brothel door, in that they are looking for fulfillment in things that will only leave them empty. And because instant, but quickly fleeting, gratification is always at our fingertips…we have become addicted.” (Relevant Magazine). How is it that generations later, this famous comedian of our day, is still telling the same story of Paul’s day, of Hosea’s day? Nothing has changed!

   

All of humanity has been lost from Perfect Love. In its place, is this “repetitive, loveless, cheap sex…frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness…paranoid loneliness…all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants…an impotence to love or be loved…uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions…” empty pursuits to try and find love, the pre-occupation of casual sex with many lovers in the quest to attain what cannot be gotten – love from others and from things.

But here in Hosea, the offense expressed and felt in chapters Hosea 4-14, is like a piled high mountainous stack of foul and rancid sludge, threatening to topple or slide.

There is no faithfulness,

no love,

no acknowledgment of God in the land.

There is only cursing,

lying

and murder,

stealing

and adultery;

they break all bounds,

and bloodshed

follows bloodshed (Hosea 4:1-2, NIV).

In rejecting You, Your beloved people yield to a lifestyle of cursing, lying, murder, stealing and adultery, to name a few. They don’t just try it once, feel guilty and return to You; they don’t even just dabble in it like a rebellious child might, they break all bounds. These acts are who they have become characterized as; it is their way of life and their way of thinking. There is a without restraint kind of indulgence in the debase life they are living. Breaking any and all boundaries. Going beyond. Intentional. Planned. Without regard. ‘Don’t care’ sin. And it has ruined them.

Israel’s rebellious acts are often expressed in sexual language and as adultery. And in the same way, what could be read as an angry, punishing, vindictive, jealous God towards a rebellious humanity who continually refuse to acknowledge You, and turn their backs on You, is actually the telling of a broken-hearted Lover, longing for the relationship with His beloved to be restored. Their actions of adultery and their ignorant pursuit of love crushes Your very heart.

You are God who is love. The essence of One who is Love feels deeply the full knowledge of delight in the mutually satisfying joy of connection – and the acuteness and heart-agony of betrayal.

Their ruin dictates the rest of Your story. It does not stop with the people of Hosea’s day, You feel the ruin of all of humanity, and in equal measure, Your heart breaks over Your love offered but rejected, Your people treasured, but lost. 

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.]

Wait! I need to define my worth…

None of my brokenness darkens or diminishes¹ my worth.

None of my brokenness is able to put an end to the unfailing love You have for me that seeks my company and my return to relationship with You.

Yes, like Israel, and like Gomer, I am ruined, broken, desperate, lost, but You love me here. You understand why I am here. You alone know the severity of sin’s ruin in my life. You alone see every little circumstance and thought that has led me to this place. And You love me to the very depths of who I am.

The reading of Hosea has been hard to hear. It’s dispiriting when over and over I read how ruined humanity is, yet I know it has led me to discover this –

As deep as Your offense toward sin has been, there is a deeper depth of Your love revealed.

 It is a glorious mystery that You would love me as You do and consider me worthy of Your love.

    

The truth of this is barely believable to this heart that spends its lifetime seeking worth from others, yet never really finding satisfaction in what I get.

Yet this is what I know – I, as an imperfect parent, have an incredibly deep love for my children. I love them, end of story. I long for the best in them. I am their greatest cheerleader in life. I am heart-bonded to them with some kind of unexplainable emotional ties that I don’t really comprehend. I get to support and walk alongside them. I know them. I know how they will respond, how they are thinking and feeling even without them saying a word. I feel deeply the things that make them sad, and I grieve the decisions that I see that will bring unwanted consequences in their lives.

Though imperfect, so great is my love for them, that never once do I think they are unworthy of my love. Their infinite value and preciousness to me means that I cannot see them any other way than as worthy recipients of my love. Do they deserve it always? No! Deserving something and valuing something are two completely different things. Often I can be abused by them. They can be ungrateful and needy and selfish. Sometimes I can be deeply hurt by what I give out to them and receive non-appreciation, little acknowledgment, and few positive responses back. But their person is so valued and so precious to me, that I am heart and soul compelled to love them, and compelled by love for them. Their value makes them worthy of my love. Worthy does not mean they (nor I), am blameless, without fault, guiltless, or innocent. It does not mean that their character is flawless. It means, that despite these things, their value to me is so highly regarded, that I see them as worthy. I understand from my human parenting how then this is true of You toward me.

The voice I have heard all my life is “not worthy”.  

From myself, I’ve felt unworthy. From others, the hurtful words spoken, or the disinterest, the lack of preciousness felt, has all said to my heart that I am not valued as I long to be. And from my religious upbringing – I have been told I am a sinner. Not worthy of God’s grace. The emphasis has been on my sin, which has always been combined with my person so that I have never known that who I am is of worth. There was no separation made between the two. But what I now understand is that You are heart and soul compelled to love me, and compelled by love for me, just as I am for my children. The truth is that You delight in me, smile at my presence in this world, and enjoy who I am. I don’t understand that I could be considered worthy, but I know that I am.

Your love can be viewed similarly to that of a lover. The love that one has for the other. The value they see in that one. The longing they have to be with them in relationship. The desire to spend time with them. The way they know that one so intimately, that they can read their mind, know what they are thinking, respond before the other one even asks. The fulfillment they feel in that one’s company, the friendship they enjoy. When things go wrong, the desire they have to mend it quickly. The willingness to forgive. The distress and grief of being out of sorts with that one. Do they not see the other as the one they want to give of their love to, even when things go wrong? Is it not true that the value they hold for that one, drives them from a desire within to give their love to this person they consider worthy, just as You see me as worthy – the One who is the Lover of my soul?

God, You asked Hosea to love Gomer as You loved her (Hosea 3:1, NIV), to see in her the worth that You saw in her. In who she was created to be. The value of her. The preciousness of her person. The goodness in her as a beloved human-being. You asked Hosea to never let her drift into unworthiness in his eyes, despite her ruin.

So when I am considering how I view myself in how ruined I am, and I feel so thoroughly ruined, it is not my person that has lost value or worth in Your eyes. My worth has not been ruined, my goodness in your eyes has not been ruined, but my thoughts, my decisions, my actions, my responses, my intentions, my emotions, my inclinations – have been. Sin has infested every fibre of my being, that I am lost in it, and in my eyes that makes me worthless, useless and wretched, in the way that I cannot help but be defined and controlled by my ruin. It has made me blind and lost toward You, not even desiring You, and to always be inclined and influenced towards its continual perversion of me.

And yet there is this truth that my heart has longed to hear, that I am loved so greatly, and so valued, that You would say, “you ARE worthy of My love”.

My heart has needed to know this!

¹I loved these words from William, P. Young’s novel, Eve, Howard Books, 2015

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.]

Counterfeit lovers…

My friends made me feel good. They made me feel accepted and wanted, that I fitted there, that I belonged. Drinking this, smoking that, wearing this, and being at that were the outward evidences that I was right – I belonged there, with them. But why inwardly, was it so exhausting? Why was there the constant battle in my head, and in my heart, and why did I have to convince myself that this was fun – this is what I wanted?

Why did I have to pretend to be someone else – someone they would want to be with?

And why did I pray every night I don’t want this forever, God, I just want it for now?

To be truthful, there was some satisfaction found in this belonging and associated reveling. But it was so temporary in its filling. Being always on the outside of them, keeping myself aloof, living within the prohibitions of my church, guilty because I was not in the right place, doing the right things, desiring to honour my parents but longing also to fit in, watching the freedom my friends had…these all played tug-of-war in my head. But the hardest was Love. Hardest because I had developed a sweet intimacy with You – and I knew I was walking out on that because I couldn’t manage to mesh the two. They wouldn’t intertwine. It was One or the other. Knowing I chose the other over the One, was life-sapping. It was tiring convincing myself that I was enjoying being with these other lovers when my heart had already known Love. It didn’t satisfy. It didn’t make me feel good. And fitting in just came to feel like it wasn’t in the end what really mattered.

It was the lure of others that Hosea speaks of (Hosea 14:3a, NIV). For Israel, it was other nations, like Assyria. For me, it was my friends. I thought satisfaction could be found in their philosophies – if it feels good do it, it’s my life I can do as I please, I want what they’ve got, experience everything, you only live once – and my own personal one, I don’t want this forever, I just want it for now. I had become Gomer. I had willingly and waywardly prostituted myself, casually coming and going from One to the other – but never feeling like I was being faithful to either. God, I knew You, why then did I long for other lovers as if they could satisfy me? I mean, I knew You, yet my friends with the enticement of, come fit with us, just seemed to sweep me off my feet. Why so easily? I got tired of it. It wasn’t lasting like Perfect Love is lasting. It was intimate with my flesh only, not intimate like You are with my soul. It’s laced with regret even now, not like the lingering sense of satisfaction that Your love gives. But these lovers took my heart on so readily – and today I’m left wondering how come this counterfeit love seduced me so easily?

 

Hosea talks of a second counterfeit loverstrength. When love has hurt us, we can fall to thinking that we will just rely on ourselves. That we are strong enough. That we can survive this and get through. That we’ve got what it takes. That we have the strength of war-horses (Hosea 14:3b, NIV).

I’ve fallen in love with some beautiful people that are survivors: girlfriends that have been through a lot of rough stuff and survived, gathering strength from within to do so. They’ve had to. Everyone and everything else has failed them. Love has disillusioned them. They have labeled themselves strong – and while others praise and pride them about being survivors, I see it, and my heart aches with pain for them. For what they have become skilled at, is to shut off from their emotions so that the next thing, or the next one, they encounter won’t hurt. They can’t trust anyone, only themselves, and so they live with a lonely, look-to-their-own-strength and I’ll get through, resolve to life. But their personal strength cracks often. Some days it’s too hard to keep that survival exterior intact. They put on a face, but their emotions leak, they can’t always hold it in, can’t always hide what is going on in their world. Doing their hair and makeup, the clothes, the jewellery, the shoes, give them the appearance of togetherness. Even the tattoos, though beautiful works of art, often betray a toughness and resilience to survive.

I was working on a project for a course I was taking. It was to create a 3D collage that represented something of my life. I’d lived life closely alongside some survivor-girls, so their journey impacting mine at a heart level made this topic an obvious choice – I called her, Out-of-Sorts.  She was a female polystyrene head paper-mached with quotes like –

  • I like to think that everything is all right, because when everybody else thinks you’re fine, sometimes you forget for a while that you are not.
  • That moment when you are completely falling apart and no-one notices.
  • She’s banged up mentally and emotionally. Literally and metaphorically. But every day she walks outside with a smile on her face because that’s who she is.
  • She comes off as strong, but maybe she fell asleep crying. She acts as if nothing is wrong, but maybe she’s just really good at lying.

It was crafted with every little addition being symbolic of these girlfriends, from the hair to the earrings, the flower crown, and the tattoo. All representing the time taken and the things used to cover up the pain inside. To help her look strong. To help keep her together.

Often a girlfriend would turn up for coffee, or catch up to talk. Her smile, her makeup, and clothes, even her words, all betrayed her attempt to hide the battle within. In just a look or a few words of greeting, I could tell today was hard. Her emotions were leaking, even if just through the sadness or emptiness or fear and panic in her eyes. Maybe, it was the hardness or the stubbornness she wore. But today was a day when the walls were cracking, and she was fighting fiercely to keep them intact.

It was for her that I wrote this poem – days that I could see were too hard. Her strength, her war-horses could not keep the battle away and I would go home with my heart in pieces for her, and unable to express it any other way, I wrote it in the hope that her lovers – strength, fear of falling apart, survival – would give way to the One who saw through her being and deeply loved her soul. 

   

You, God, could be the strength she needed. You, could wrap Your arms around her heart. God, I knew this is what You longed to do. The lovers, survival, and strength, are very powerful lovers. But they are counterfeits. They will fail her.

 

Then, a third counterfeit – other gods (Hosea 14:3c, NIV).

We have our own gods. Gods of substance, gods of relationships, gods of work, gods of pleasure, gods of fashion, gods of food, gods of art, gods of science, gods of sport, gods of adrenaline, gods of violence, gods of selfish ambition – so many gods that we weary ourselves with and give ourselves to, as if by honouring and sacrificing ourselves to these things, they will meet our insatiable need for the love and fulfillment that only You can give.

There is a weariness from what is expected and demanded from the worship of these other counterfeit lovers. Instead of fuelling us and giving us an excitement for life, they start out as sweet but end up weighing us down or leaving us feeling empty, unfulfilled, and sometimes bitter. We were designed for intimacy with You, not for the other lovers we run to. A relationship with You is never burdensome because it aligns with our design – created for intimacy with You God, the Lover of our Souls. The worship of You satisfies, enticing us to long for more of You. The prostitution of ourselves to counterfeit lovers does not.

 

Hosea, (14:1-3, NIV), pleads with Israel to agree that their counterfeit lovers (the lure of others, the strength of war-horses, and other gods) have left them empty. It is the plea from a prophet who now understands love. He says, “Who is wise? Let them realize these things. Who is discerning? Let them understand” (Hosea 14:9, NIV).  And these are his final words!

 

This book has been an obscene picture and an insane ask! You asked Hosea to marry a prostitute! Who would even understand what You were doing through this man? Israel would look on and think “just another ridiculous prophet”. But what a prostitute does by constantly returning to casual sex with her many lovers, her promiscuity, her unfaithful character, and no regard to commitment, is shameful and offensive. Yet this is exactly how Israel has been to You.

Asking Hosea to faithfully love, to remain true to promises made, to forgive, to invite back, to long for, to pursue, to grieve over, and to want intimacy with her, seems ridiculous! A dramatic obscene parable in the hope that Your people would in wisdom see it, realize what You are portraying, discern the symbolism, and understand that this is You. I doubt they got it. You are Hosea in this story: You have been faithful, deeply in Love with Your bride, forgiving and pursuing her, longing for intimacy, grieving over what has been lost, and the betrayal of this one You have given Yourself to – Israel, the prostitute.

You have experienced the pain of a love rejected. Did they even get it?    Do I?

I know God, that this dramatic story extends further than Israel. It reaches right across humanity. We are the prostitute – ever unfaithful. I am Gomer. You are Hosea. Even though I am ruined by sin and constantly returning to my lovers, You would say of me,

“How can I give you up? How can I hand you over? How can I treat you like one destroyed in anger? My heart is changed within me; all my compassion is aroused” (Hosea 11:8, NIV). “I will heal their waywardness and love them freely, for my anger has turned away from them” (Hosea 14:4, NIV). Your Love is a redeeming love, it will win…and one day I will experience Your love’s perfection. But even today, You again invite me into intimacy, “Let me Love you and I will Love you”. You offer this to me now, here, broken, and messed up. You know all that is in me and about me, and yet You still desire me.

If the casual sex with many lovers is my empty, counterfeit, destructive, in vain search for a love that cannot satisfy, what is it that You are offering me instead? Who am I to You that You would bother? Who would I become were I to fall into that Perfect Love and allow it to embrace me?

Lover of my Soul, what is this love you offer?

Continued in next week’s blog…