peace . love . joy

These few days, I've been reading the book of Hosea. Now I'm pretty sure many of you know the story, the big picture of Hosea. He's the prophet who is called by God to pursue, marry, lie with, ransome and love a woman infamously notorious for her adulterous behaviour.

Spanning just the first two chapters of the book, Gomer, Hosea's whorish wife, took on the profession of a prostitute! Imagine that: they've only gotten married at the beginning of chapter one, and by the end of chapter two, she's become a whore! Mind you, the first two chapters of Hosea are not long at all: together, they amount to only 34 verses. Moreover, consider who she was married to - Hosea, an obedient man of God, a prophet. Not to mention a perhaps somewhat trivial, but fun fact that a book in the Bible is named after him! Gomer's slip back into unfaithfulness, assuming her character as she was before her marriage to Hosea, was quick and perhaps unmeditated for this tendency of hers had become too much a part of her being, probably, that it would take quite a bit for her to even consider to mend her ways.

At the beginning of chapter three, we see Hosea instructed by God to go again to Gomer and to love her in spite of her behaviour:


Embarrassing. Hurtful. Impossible. Saddening. Frustrating. Confusing. Painful.
These are the brand of words that I can think of to describe this "marriage" of sorts, between a prophet of God and a prostitute of the world. I don't think I can manage to even catch a glimpse of what Hosea must have felt locked in this relationship, out of love and out of obedience.

Obedience to God's biddings sometimes come with a tag that reads "caution: part of you will take a beating if assumed". Sometimes it's something in us that is squished and trodden all over, like swallowing our pride and saying sorry and asking for forgiveness when we are wrong. Other times, it feels as though we must climb up to the summit of a mountain steeper than K2 and higher than Mount Everest, like when the Holy Spirit sealed within us tugs at our heartstrings to say something, or stand up for what we know God deems is right when we feel fearfully shy or apprehensive to do so. And sometimes, in obeying the Lord, we find ourselves on the receiving end of not just emotional turmoil, but physical torture.

Can you identify with any of these?
Are you like Hosea: obedient, even though sometimes the instruction puzzles you,
even though it causes you some form of pain or torment,
even though you know it will cause you pain?

Sounds a little depressing, doesn't it?
A kind of win-lose situation, where He wins some and we lose some.
To answer and respond to the "Perfect Love" only to be rewarded with embarrassment, hurt, sadness, frustration, confusion, pain..

But get this:
through Hosea's tiring ordeal, God, being the mastermind He is, was doing something incredibly fascinating!
You see, because of Hosea, because of his life being recorded and passed down through the generations as a part of the Holy Bible, breathed by God, sacred and true, we are all invited to see, to literally read into God's own emotional life!

Hosea and the Father share an extremely bizarre, practically out-of-this-world commonality:
they are both married, voluntarily yoked to unfaithful brides, adulterous wives.
Hosea's hurt, though perhaps very much more human in that we may attempt to and achieve understanding of his anguish, is God's hurt. His sadness is God's sadness. His frustration is God's frustration. His pain is God's pain.

But oh how much more God's affliction is compared to Hosea's, compared to ours. His bride is not just one mortal, His lifetime along with hers not just one composed of finite days. No, His bride is all of us, each separate individual, each beloved creation-life coming in and out of existence on Earth in a staggered, overlapping fashion.

He knows this.
He knows that it will be a torturously long and painful torment to love the unfaithful, the adulterous, the whore.

And yet, He still chooses to love and to suffer.

To love and to suffer..

For us.