Understanding the Aching Heart of our Lover - Reflections from Hosea (#4)

I've known - so have you - people whose hearts ache over a long period of time.

An aching heart is simply this - the very core of our being must host an unwelcomed resident.  The resident is a profound sadness coupled with a frustrating inability.  Something important isn't right.  Something very important isn't getting better.  Something important that isn't right and isn't getting better is also something about which very little can be done.  But love.  And ache.

I've found that the hearts that ache most acutely reside in the breasts of parents.  Hearts that ache for their children.  Relationships have gone sour, are being dismantled.   Families are fragmenting, and reformatting into new and fractured configurations that are not, actually better.  Perhaps tolerable.  But not right, and not what was intended on that expensive and joyous wedding day.

How is this happening?  How could it be?

A simple, obedient love for God, His word, and His ways have been abandoned by boys and girls, sons and daughters, who have become men and women...and somewhere along the way, they decided that mom and dad's faith and following-the-Lord didn't work of them...and probably never will.  Or sometimes its the reverse.  The son and his wife are eagerly following the Lord, but dad and mom are suddenly parting ways.  They played "the game" and "covered up (fairly) well" for a long time...but now that the glue of kids-in-the-home is gone, there was no other glue to be found.

Regardless of the details of so many difficult scenarios, for so many, the heart hosts a sad, impotent pain for those whom you still desperately love.

NOW...and THEN

What heartache we may experience today is what our Lord, our Lover, has experienced in many a generation.  A read of Hosea's prophetic words reveals the aching heart of God 8 centuries before the arrival of Christ.

In the last chapter of the Old Testament book, God again asks his own people, "What have I to do with idols...?"  His people had become enamored with, and given their lives to, idols.  All the things which other peoples with handmade objects of worship promoted.  And, they had redirected and deposited their trust for their personal safety, security, and future in political alliances with the leaders and armies of God-less nations.

"My people inquire of a piece of wood..." 4:12
"Ephraim is joined to idols..."  4:17
"Ephraim is like a dove, silly and without sense, calling to Egypt, going to Assyria..." 7:11
"They sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind..." 8:7
"Now they sin more and more, and make for themselves metal images, idols skillfully made of their silver, all of them the work of craftsmen..." 13:2

AND YET...

Though God's heart, like that of any suffering parent, aches, it is still expectant that something could happen.  That repentance and restoration are still possible.

The aching heart still loves...and still hopes.  Love longs to win the day.