Hosea

I moved to South Dakota almost two years ago now and it’s honestly so insane to wrap my mind around! I’ve been thinking about it a lot though, since I have two hours alone in the car for my work commute  during the week. Something that has a habit of coming to my mind pretty consistently in each season I’ve gone through in the past two years is the book of Hosea in the Old Testament.

In a nutshell, Hosea is this guy who God tells to “marry a promiscuous woman and have children with her.” And he does. He ends up finding this woman named Gomer, who doesn’t change her ways even after having children with this dude! God tells him to go and love her even though she was unfaithful. ...because that is how God saw the Israelites even though they turned to other gods and practiced their new moon festivals. I don’t know about you, but before I read this story, I thought the God of the Old Testament was a God of punishment and rage. Loving someone who doesn’t deserve it though? Despite repeated offenses? That FLOORS me.

So when I read it first, I thought, wow this is awesome! It doesn’t matter what I’ve done. People should just forgive me. Haha. I mean, yeah, in a perfect world? Maybe. But that’s not the point. That was the first layer I saw of this story. It was just an example for me to see that God is an unconditionally loving God. Obviously God isn’t saying go out and do whatever, or that what you’ve done doesn’t matter. He is showing a radical kind of love though. In this world, sometimes one wrong is all it takes (or who you vote for) in order for a person to complety be done with you. It’s very much conditional. (I’m absolutely not saying to stay in friendships or relationships that are physically or emotionally abusive though, run clear in the other direction from those.)

The next layer I worked through, was my Christian walk and how that came about. I was really reminiscent of a family that showed me what it was like to be a follower of Jesus and often thought, wow, if it wasn’t for them I would’ve never this..never that. Never gone to church, never read the Bible. At that point I wasn’t thinking of how big God is. He’s like, really big, y’all. And super capable and enough for you.

“She has not acknowledged that I was the one who gave her the grain, the new wine and oil, who lavished on her the silver and gold-which they used for Baal.” -Hosea 2:8

What I didn’t understand was that it was God all along that was providing so abundantly for me. Not people. He lavished me when I didn’t deserve it, and loved me despite my wandering heart. This was kind of an aha moment a few months after I read it for the first time. I think what drew me to this story was how much junk this girl carried, and still, God persued her. I always thought you had to be a saint or that you had to have it all figured out to be used by God. Nah, if anything, he uses some pretty messed up people for some pretty extraordinary things, which constantly gives me encouragement in a weird way.

More recently God has revealed an even deeper layer of this story to me. A group of girls and I are going through a book called Captivating, and in a chapter called Romanced we learn about how God draws us to himself. Hosea was quoted in a way I hadn’t seen it before, and the author explains how God thwarts our efforts to find life apart from him. Now..if you really think about it, it seems super harsh. This unconditionally loving God is going to thwart me?

“therefore I will block her path with thornbushes; I will wall her in so that she cannot find her way. She will chase after her lovers but not catch them; she will look for them but not find them.” (2:6-7)

Ummmmm wait that actually sounds super harsh, right? But then again, does a parent who lets their child do whatever they want sound like a very loving parent? I mean, a child doesn’t have the cognitive ability to see the bigger picture, and so I would argue that isn’t very loving at all. What comes next though is really something else.

“therefore I am going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her.” (2:14)

Before I moved here, my heart was in such a dark place. No effort of my own or of others seemed to help either. This place was my desert. Especially east river SD(lol). I knew no one and my heart was aching over all that I had been pulled away from. At first it was my idea to move here(I am going to allure her), or so I thought. Everyone was doing cool things with their lives and I thought I needed to be doing the same. Getting away from my hometown. Anywhere but there. And then here I was in a foreign place and it was a lot scarier than how I pictured it. But it was here that I found fellowship with people who really knew God, who desired to show me what he truly was like (and speak tenderly to her). He had to block my path, draw me out, so I could understand what he had been saying the whole time. He had to strip away every piece of my I held so dear. And GOSH did that hurt.

A good friend, Madison Hart, brought in a devotional to bible study one night and read a little to us about a potter and a tea cup. At first it was just clay, and when the potter slapped it on the wheel, it screamed in pain, “ouch! You threw me down! Why would you do that?” And the Potter just kept on. He added water and began to push, and even more the clay felt pain, ouch you are hurting me, moving me around this way! Still he kept on. Soon he pulled the clay up, creating a vessel, but also causing a great deal of pain in growth. Finally when he was finished the clay sighed a sigh of relief. Thank goodness that’s over. Until he took him to the oven. He screamed and cried, it’s too hot in here, I can’t take it, please let me out! And the potter persisted. Finally he took him out and began to paint the cup. It felt nice and he felt beautiful. And then, again, the potter took him to the oven. Not again! Please don’t! He cried about the heat, the pain. And when he emerged from the oven, a beautiful cup painted so delicately was radiant and the cup understood.

God had to drag me out of where I was so I could look back and understand what he had in store for me. I’m still processing through all of this, and I’m sure there are things I’m missing now that He will show me later on. The growing pains and the heat often feel like just too much for me to handle. Please God, can you make this end? And I receive nothing. Prayers I’ve prayed for years. Nothing. And yet, each time I go through pain, I emerge understanding just a little bit more. I hope you begin to see this too. For now, just rest in knowing that it’s in the broken that God can do the most work. All it takes is a willing heart, and sometimes that isn’t something we can just manifest, he has to thwart our stubborn hearts to woo us. And man does He provide if only you knock on his door and trust.

Praying that your adventures are meaningful and that you glorify God wherever you are, and that he shows up for you big time today.

💕mags.