Healing Rays of Righteousness

Through the prophet Hosea, we are given a sweeping review of the earlier history of God’s people. Hosea sees and understands the past, present, and future of Israel as God’s child from the perspective of God being the divine parent who remembers with joy, anguishes with grief, suffers with loneliness, and looks forward with hope.

To read these verses slowly and reflectively is to feel the deep pain of God’s lonely, heartbroken love for his people. Yes, grievously heartbroken, because his people had foolishly rejected and ignored his freely offered invite into a relationship of love. Yes, painful loneliness, because his people chose instead to follow the false gods of selfish consumerism, fearful racism, and divisive politics.

Unfortunately, current attitudes and behaviors in our nation and churches today, by many people who call themselves Christian, have caused me to remember this earlier story, and believe it to be currently as true as it was then.

Chapter 11 opens with God, the parent, saying that, “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.”  You then immediately feel the pain of a rejected love that this all-knowing parent has for his child, “But the more they were called, the more they went away from me.”  And yet, He lavishly poured out His grace and love upon them.

God graciously loved his people and helped them get out of Egypt. But Israel soon chose to worship new gods and broke the basic rule of the covenant, “You shall have no other gods before me” (Ex. 20:3). Did they do this deliberately and intentionally? Probably not. More likely it was the result of the people becoming careless in nurturing their faith and thus their relationship with God became non-existent.

The Assyrians soon disrupted Israel’s peace and prosperity. Hosea saw and understood this event to be God’s judgment upon the faithlessness and immorality of the people.

But throughout this time of defeat and despair, Hosea’s prophetic ministry continued to affirm the (“hesed”) steadfast love of God. “Hesed” is a passionate, emotional, persistent, and loyal love, a love that will not ever quit loving. Although the lover clearly sees the beloved’s unfaithfulness, “hesed” relentlessly works for the restoration of the relationship.

And, according to Hosea, that is the kind of love God has for his people. God chose these people, claimed them as children, made a covenant to faithfully love them, when he brought them out of bondage in Egypt. But they prostituted themselves by turning to other gods.

And this heartbroken, lonely God asks, “How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, Israel? How can I treat you like Admah? How can I make you like Zeboiim?” (11:8). God had destroyed these two cities along with Sodom & Gomorrah.

For us today, the “good news” is that the God whose heart is revealed in Hosea 11 is the same God of whom John would describe in his first letter, “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!” (3:1). “This is how we know what love is:  Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.” (3:16). “This is how God showed his love among us:  He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.” (4:9).

It may be agonizing to contemplate the thought that the Almighty God is heartbroken, lonely, and longing to reconcile our relationship with himself, to enjoy the intimacy for which we were created. But it is equally awesome to imagine an empty place in God’s heart which only you and I can fill with our voices of grateful praise.

My friend, the God who would not abandon the people of Israel has not given up on us. When we act as if He does not exist, when we sell ourselves to other lovers, when we prostitute ourselves for the sake of the pleasures of the world around us, His steadfast love follows us.

When we suffer the consequences of our own foolish choices, when we experience the results of our own sinful behavior, His steadfast love follows and overshadow us, waiting in grieving loneliness for our return to a restored relationship of total love and trust.

Let us give attention to Hosea’s appeal and respond with repentant hearts; “Come, let us return to the Lord. He has torn us to pieces, but he will heal us; he has injured us, but he will bind up our wounds. … Let us acknowledge the Lord; let us press on to acknowledge him. As surely as the sun rises, he will appear; he will come to us like the winter rains, like the spring rains that water the earth.” (6:1-3).

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Ray M. Geigley – “Healing Rays of Righteousness” – www.geigler13.wordpress.com – 8/7/24