These days, people are imagining they can win the Powerball prize, as of this writing, some $1.5 billion. One local editorial admitted, "I Hate Powerball, but I Bought 4 Tickets."
The lure of a quick, unimaginable payoff is tough to resist.
Most things we imagine doing are things we want to do. Imagine winning the lottery. Imagine living in your dream home. Imagine your kid's basketball team winning the state championship.
We like to reserve our imagination for something wonderfully positive.
Hosea insisted that, for the people in his adulterous generation, they'll need to imagine something almost unthinkable. "But Ephraim (the people of northern Israel) must lead his children out to slaughter" (Hosea 9:13-14). "O Lord...what will you give? A miscarrying womb, dry breasts."
WHAT WE EXPECT FROM GOD
Quite frankly, we expect God to give us good things. On most days, and in countless ways, He does. Scripture teaches us that we have nothing but that we've received it (cf. John 3:27). Nothing we provide. Everything, actually, God provides.
He provides for the just and the unjust, the faithful and the faithless. We are lulled into thinking that the flow of goodness will be endless, no matter how we live or what we may choose to believe.
The truth is that there is with God an end to the flow. Though His kindness is designed to lead us to repentance, without repentance, the shoe eventually drops.
WHAT WE MUST LEARN FROM HOSEA
Prophets tuned into God's Spirit can give us the early warning signs. Hosea surely tried with Abraham's descendants who lived 8 centuries before the birth of Christ. "Ephraim's glory shall fly away like a bird -- no birth, no pregnancy, no conception. Even if they bring up children, I will bereave them till none is left. Woe to them when I depart from them" (Hosea 9:11-12).
The prophetic foretelling is sobering. The children will suffer for the sins of the fathers. The fathers must lead his children out to slaughter. When Assyria comes, the unthinkable arrives. Fathers doing what cannot be imagined.
Like the arresting contrast one finds in Psalm 1, the loss of blessing and the unfolding of judgment here should both give us pause and mentor our own hearts. "My God will reject them because they have not listened to Him" (Hosea 9:17).
While you can, in a day of giving grace, listen to God. It will keep you from having to do what we'd rather not imagine.
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