Several days ago I dove into the book of Hosea and I can't seem to stop swimming in it. I'm pretty confident that it will remain my favorite book throughout my lifetime. It has become so deeply personal that it's impossible for me to read it without entering and feeling the story.
One of the things I've been noticing is the range of emotions God expresses over Israel. He goes from anger, rejection, punishment, and destruction to compassion, pursuit, longing, tenderness, and forgiveness. The more I observe these things, the more I'm stunned by how passionate His love is. He is all about the relationship. A perfect, pure, faithful, covenantal, single-focused relationship. Anything that threatens that arouses His anger. He fights for the purity of His bride. But anger is not who He is - rather the anger comes out of His love. It's because He loves so intensely that He reacts to 'waywardness' with such hatred.
The imagery used to describe these things is incredible and it's what has motivated me to write about it. Hosea 11:10 says, "He will roar like a lion. When He roars His children will come trembling from the west." Have you ever seen a lion roar? I mean, you've atleast seen the MGM trademark (although that's pretty tame for what I'm picturing). What I picture is a huge, strong lion with a full mane resting peacefully while people move around near him. Then suddenly the lion is threatened and he leaps up and lets out a long, ear-shattering roar. The roar stops everyone in their tracks. All but the roaring lion are totally frozen. And then the people begin to shake - they tremble at the sudden awareness of who is in their midst. Then fear fills them. What is going to happen? Will we be destroyed? Where did he come from? What is not realized is that this angry roar is rooted in a deeply perfect love - directed at the very ones who are trembling. This lion is doing what it takes to get their attention and invite them into his loving protection. Some ears hear the love within the roar and come trembling to him, others never do ...
In chapel today we sang 'Hosanna' by Hillsong. With this image in my head, these lyrics felt especially powerful ...
"I see the King of glory
Coming on the clouds with fire
The whole earth shakes, the whole earth shakes
I see His love and mercy
Washing over all our sin
The people sing, The people sing"
And how appropriate is this response ...
"Heal my heart and make it clean
Open up my eyes to the things unseen
Show me how to love like You have loved me"
I did a devotion for my students a week ago on true love, and used a contemporary version of the story of Hosea as an illustration. I contrasted that with a passage from some book that the girls at Heritage are totally into. Had someone never heard of love before, I think they would be flabbergasted to find that it was possible for a single thing to be defined in such contrasting ways. Good post. Can't wait to see you.
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