It's tough to love.
Perhaps it comes more naturally for some and less naturally for others.
From what I read in the ancient story in Hosea, it comes naturally for God, even though such loving is pricey, frustrating, and turns even the Almighty's heart inside out.
Hosea, a prophet living in the 8th century B.C., in the land of Judah and Israel, is asked to portray the love God has for his people. The assignment - "Go love and start a family with a whore." Hosea did. As I say, it's tough to love.
He obediently stepped into it knowing that his wife would be unfaithful, that he would have to be a single parent for long stretches of a time ("have children of whoredom"), and continue to love "her" despite her choices to wrap herself around other men time and time again.
Hosea 1 contains God's charge to his prophet. He and Gomer would have three children at the first. A son, Jezreel, "God will sow." Then a daughter, Lo-Ruhama, "no mercy." A third, another son, "Lo-Ammi," not my people." Each time the names were uttered in the household, or called out down the street retrieving them from play, the dreadful scenario of Israel's (and Gomer's) unfaithfulness would echo.
Hosea 2 predicts how the marriage relationship would play out. The kids were asked to plead with their whorring mother to stop, but she would refuse. "I will go after my lovers," she insisted, thinking that other men would provide better for her. And in her adulteries, God would sow the seeds of a coming judgment that would look merciless. It would look like this bunch no longer had ANY relationship with God. Gomer's, and Israel's, life would tailspin downward.
Hosea 3 is a surprise. A love surprise one might say. Hosea is to go and find his wife in her wasted, debauched condition, and "love the adulteress again." Buy her off the block where prostitutes are sold. Why? Because in the far and distant future, love will prevail. Someday, though it cannot yet be fully seen in the telescope, Israel will "return and seek God, and David." Yet it will only come through the persistent love of a God who's tenacity will not be defeated.
Loving can be a tough, tenacious wait. A giving over and over again without immediate, tangible results. It can be a lonely, heart-wrenching enterprise that one could easily walk away from, and no one would blame you. This kind of loving is not an affectionate feeling; it is an ongoing, personal, costly sacrifice.
God's love doesn't quit. He may ask us to love someone -- in our world -- in the very same way.
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