HOSEA CHAPTERS 11 & 14
Rev. Adam Tierney-Eliot
Scripture Reading: Hosea Chapters 11 and 14
Focusing Quote: “I will heal their disloyalty; I will love them freely, for my anger has turned from them.” Hosea 14:4
Meditation:
Hosea is one of those prophets who sometimes gets a bit lost in the contemporary imagination. Perhaps he doesn’t seem quite as loud or histrionic as others. Sometimes he seems to blend in to the back ground when compared to his contemporary Micah, of “Do justice, love mercy, walk humbly” fame. But in these two chapters he shows us the kind of god who helps us through the dark times, even if the darkness is of our own choosing.
Hosea himself had to ask for forgiveness and he needed to learn how to forgive. He was married to the prostitute Gomer and helped raise two sons and a daughter, even though he probably didn’t know for sure whether he was the biological father or not. Perhaps this situation made him sensitive to suffering. Perhaps it was something else. Either way, here we find God’s attitude toward transgression less one of condemnation and judgment than one of grief and fellow-suffering.
Here is a way to think of Hosea’s message for us today. If you have spent any time keeping tabs on current events, then you probably are aware that the nation is going through some hard times. I certainly am. I’ve also learned a lot. For example, I didn’t even know who Henry Paulson was just a month ago! Now I certainly do.
Like many people, I am finding it pretty easy to get angry at those folks who have helped the financial crisis along. How greedy, how irresponsible can they be? But, when I think this way, every once in a while someone will say or write something that reflects back on me. At that moment I realize that the only big difference between these bankers and politicians who let this happen on the one hand, and me on the other is a matter of degree.
You see, I too, responded to the “years of plenty” by making choices that possibly were somewhat selfish. I, too, wasn’t the most responsible. As far as the economy is concerned, mistakes were made and I made them. At times I put myself and my own comfort before the needs of the environment and the poor. I suspect that some of you reading this know what I am talking about. Maybe you have gone to the gas station and been forced to realize how much of a gas guzzler your car really is. Or perhaps you have gone to the bank (or received that credit card bill) and noticed that perhaps you were living somewhat outside your means. If you haven’t, you probably know someone who has had a moment like this. There are plenty of them and every day there are more.
As with any crisis of this sort there are those people who feel that God is punishing us. Some will even point to “signs” that prove it! But, really, we are punishing ourselves and God, though angry, is with us in our pain. “How Can I give you up?” God says in Hosea 11:8, “My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender.”
To God we are like the prodigal son, still loved in spite of our waywardness. Or we can imagine that God and we are like a couple in which one person confidently goes and does what he or she pleases. And the other individual—God—fears the answer to the simple question, “do you love me?” The question then, for us, is how we find our way back to the right path. How do we dig ourselves out of the hole we have found ourselves in? We are loved, we know that, but we still need to search our hearts, admit we are wrong, and find a way toward repentance and reparation.
In other words, we need to love in return and act on that love. How will you go about it?
Prayer: Dear God, I know you love me. Help me to see that love. Help me also not to take you for granted. Help me to walk in your way, to do what is good and right for your people and creation. Please show me where I have made mistakes. I promise to do my best to make amends, to bind up the broken and to nurture and grow the Commonwealth of Heaven here on Earth. Amen
“I am like the evergreen cypress; your faithfulness comes from me. Those who are wise understand these things; those who are discerning know them. For the ways of God are right and the upright walk in them, but transgressors stumble.” Hosea 14:8b-9
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