Thursday, May 8, 2014

I Found LOVE in the Book Of Hosea!!!

At the end of each day, I spend some time pondering over the events of the day, trying to remember if I may have wronged anyone or said anything out of place so I can set things right as soon as possible. There are times when I remember something awful I said to someone and I feel like biting my tongue and other times, I just feel biting my tongue will not be enough to salvage the damage I may have caused with my attitude, which was probably borne out of anger, irritation or any other thing that may have peeved me that day. 

I am sure many of us feel that way sometimes too. You tell yourself over and over..." I could have handled that situation better or I could have just kept my mouth shut! Days like that, I feel too bad to pray because I imagine God is so cross with me, he probably won't even look my way.

Recently, I decided to start reading the books of the bible I often ignore - the book of the prophets, starting from Hosea. I had never attempted to study this section of the bible, but an urge in my spirit led me to Hosea and I was dumbfounded by the time I finished the first chapter. In Hosea 1:2, God told Prophet Hosea to go and marry a prostitute. Yes, you read right! A prostitute, an immoral woman who has 'been around the block and back' (to put it nicely). 

God's reason was to show Hosea how unfaithful Israel had become, how the people dabbled in religious promiscuity- jumping from god to god and ignoring the one true God. Hosea did as he was told and his wife had children (the bible doesn't say for sure that they were his). In the second chapter, God expresses his anger towards Israel's unfaithfulness. The first few verses are filled with the words 'Rebuke!' 'Adulterous', 'Unfaithfulness'....I wanted to stop reading at this point. I suddenly had a sore in my heart for how I made God feel with my faithless-ness, fear, aloof behaviour and all other attitudes that would break a father's heart if his child were to possess them. In spite of my sore heart, I kept reading. 

In Hosea 3:1, God said to Hosea "go and show love to your wife again, though she is an adultress. Love her as the Lord loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods". What?! To go back and show love to an adultress?! My surprise didn't end there.

In verse 3 of Chapter 3, Prophet Hosea says "So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and about a homer and a lethek of barley." It's not the price that surprised me, it's the fact that he BOUGHT her back! He paid for an adultress! A woman who had been with so many men, she had lost count. Wasn't he supposed to just say "Hey woman! Come back here! And she'd run to him, considering no other man in the land would want to marry her?

But then I thought to myself........

Isn't that the same thing God did for me, for you, for all of us? We sinned through no fault of His, we still sin every single day. We gossip, we trample on people, we judge people, we look down on them, we are sanctimonious and pious on the outside, yet on the inside, our hearts are worse than a toilet that has been in use for months but never cleaned. In spite of our faults, sins and even our rebel against Jesus, God bought us back! He didn't say "You may come back now" with all the attitude He would be entitled to, He sent his son to die for us! To redeem us, to buy us back....That is true love! and it gladdens my heart each day. I hope it gladdens yours too!!! I hope I have more to share from my study of the book of the prophets.

Till then, XOXO 

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