peace . love . joy

Love is really a fickle-minded thing, huh?

Maybe I should qualify that: of all the different faces of love, romantic love proves to be one of the most, or perhaps even the most tricky and slippery of them all. An exciting prize calling out to be hunted and courted and gained, a warm and beautiful lense with which to view the world and all that exists once possessed and shared, yes, but also pure torture and misery when unrequited or lost.

Sometimes, we think we know someone, we think we love someone, we feel like we're already married, vows yet to be uttered though, but understood between two. When suddenly, the tablecloth is whipped from under us and all that's left are the shiny metal and glass cutlery grinding on the cold hard surface of the table of life. We feel hurt and confused, upset and frustrated.. and somewhat betrayed.

If an Earthly romance that we experience and relate in our puny intellect and finite emotions can cause so much devastation to our entire being, what is it like to an entity whose knowledge and wisdom far exceeds our ability to comprehend its vastness and wealth, to an entity whose vocabulary of feeling is so complex and unfathomable, to an entity who created word and feeling, to an entity such as God?

A creation abandoning its creator, choosing to worship other creations and looking no farther than what its bodily senses register. A beloved betraying her lover, choosing to romp the fields with another. A bride shaming her bridegroom, choosing to satisfy desires of the flesh out of wedlock.

Through our misery and joy, we are like Hosea, we are like he who was chosen by God to reveal to the world His inner turmoil and frustrations. God uses our pain to acquaint us with His pain, to acquaint us with His love.

We are Gomer, the unfaithful, the adulteress, the enlightened creation who abandoned its creator, the courted beloved who betrayed her lover, the promised bride who shamed her bridegroom. Though we have heard of and know this perfect and good love of His, we still choose to satisfy the longings of the flesh and the desires of the world. We choose to worship the senses and that which delights the senses, but forget the One who made it all. We choose to stray. And left to our own devices, the urge and temptation to stray will prove fatal to many, too many.

By instructing Hosea to buy back his wayward whore-wife, God demonstrates a prophetic act which He will and has performed:

He bought us.
Paid the ransom of a pure and blemishless lamb which He loved and still loves with all His heart,
and set us free from sin and eternal death of burning Sulphur, of gnashing teeth, of darkness and rot.

We are habitually unfaithful, serial adulterers, whores.
We are broken. We are dirty.
And yet, God demands us not to clean up our act before we may return to His side.
No.
He is ever ready to heal and to love, to redeem and to revive and to restore.

The one condition is that we return to Him. That's all he asks.
To come back and to let Him do the cleaning, let Him bring out the soap and water and sponge, let Him bring out the cloth and polish.

What kind of creator is that?
What kind of lover is that?
What kind of bridegroom is that?
To take back into His arms the wayward, the strayed, the runaway, the unfaithful?

One who truly knows how to love, who made love, who is love.
Magnanimous to forgive.
Patient to wait.
Extravagant to lavish and ransom.
Faithful to the end.