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Monday, April 9, 2010

Good evening blog buddies...hope everyone is well...I have been busy as most people are during Spring Break; that is why I did not post last week! I am pretty sure by viewing my stats that my lack of blogging last week did not rock anyone's world...but still, I will try to do better than a once per week blog.

While I was away from the internet, I read the entire book of Hosea... oops, I confess, I could not hold out and string that book out for two whole weeks! It was just too good... the Word is like honey to me, sweet and tasty...so I gobbled it all up! Really...in like two days... I really tried not to read it all at once, but I couldda' read it in one afternoon, easily!!!

I especially loved that the romance book of Hosea (Old Testament book of the Bible) is like an allegory of how GOD loves me (but I ain't no ho, yo'!) Can y'all believe that GOD told Hosea to marry a hoochie mama? Wow...it is a pretty intense love story filled with major drama from a minor prophet! Let's just all agree here and now that what GOD told Hosea to do was no minor thing, and yet Hosea is considered one of the "minor" prophets in the Bible. Not minor because it was no big deal, I am sure...because what GOD told Hosea to do was huge! He asked Hosea to love the unlovely. This was not only huge because it is an emotionally difficult thing to do, but it was huge because GOD asked a mere mortal, Hosea, to do it...and guess what? Hosea did it. He was obedient to GOD, this gives me hope that I am totally capable now that I have the Holy Spirit living in me, to guide me, it should be easy to obey GOD, right? RIGHT? Have you tried doing that lately?  Have you realized yet that GOD has asked you to love the unlovely?  uhhh, oh well...umm...Perhaps you are the unlovely, and HE has asked somebody else to love you... Hmmm?  Surely GOD has not asked you to marry a prostitute and forgive the skanky one for going back into prostitution after makin' babies with you...but HE does ask us to love the unlovely...in fact HE expects us to.

Gomer was her name (Hosea's hoochie mama). Imagine a woman who was redeemed from a life of prostitution. A life where her owner is abusive to her, and the many men that he keeps her busy with are abusive as well. .. an endless parade of people hacking away at Gomer's self esteem. I am certain that this does not give Gomer a real sense of trust for men, her own judgement, or trust in general. Let's face it Gomer's got some serious issues. She's a train wreck.

Now, imagine if you will a decent man comes along...this one is different. He is aglow with love for her, but this love is like nothing she has ever experienced before. When Hosea looks into Gomer's sad, wandering, distant stare he manages for a fleeting moment to capture her attention, and she catches a glimpse of an all consuming love in his eyes. A love that is different from the lust she is used to seeing in the greedy eyes of the men who only want to devour her, use her up, hurt her body and then treat her like trash. She does not understand this LOVE. So she does not really accept it. She feels she is not worthy. Her self esteem has been long gone, like a distant memory that she clings to...unsure of it's validity, she let's go of love, as if it is not even real. Of course love is not real, her self worth coupled with hear fears keep love at an arm's length. Her life is a life of pain...physical pain, emotional pain, spiritual emptiness...that is what is real to Gomer. Spent. Used up. Worthless. Gomer. She is a hollow soul. Her days are mere existance, just something she must get through. There is no real joy. Only Apathy. 

"Marry Hosea...meh, whatever, why not?" She asks herself. Saved from a life of prostitution, how bad could it be? She might wonder. It couldn't be any worse than what she had been used to.... but to her pleasant surprise, Hosea was truly a decent man. Hosea treated Gomer with honor and dignity, he told her that he loved her. He would bathe her body, washing her limbs, scrub her toes. He would brush her long hair and pull it back gently out of her face, as he told her he loved her and kissed her gently on her forehead. He told her that he knew that she had been though so much physically, and that he would wait for her body to heal "as long as it takes" (he told her) before he would even begin to think about starting a family. Time went by, Hosea loving Gomer, and Gomer waiting "for the other shoe to drop"...

"It's only a matter of time," thought Gomer, "before Hosea finds out that I really am not worth all his trouble, and kindness." Gomer was wrong, what she did not know was that not only was Hosea motivated by a love for her that she could not understand, but in everything that Hosea did he was motivated by his love for GOD. Hosea did not need Gomer's love, he chose her. Still it hurt him to see his wife unable to give or receive his love. Hosea was so certain and grounded and centered in his relationship with GOD that he would obey GOD by marrying this prostitute. Her behaviour did not matter, Hosea was warned of her unfaithfulness ahead of time, perhaps that is what made this bitter pill a little easier to swallow. Bottom line, Hosea loved GOD, and GOD would take care of Hosea he was certain. You see when we choose our relationships or our spouse the drama begins when we make that person our god. When we put that person on a pedestal, and believe in our heart and mind that we can not live with out them. That is a lie. What is the emotional connection? What drives your relationships? Ask yourself this, "If I am feeling like I can not live without this person, is that a really good feeling?" "Do I really want to continue down this thought path," and finally, "Is this a healthy thought"?

She gives birth to her first son, Jezreel. (Translation: GOD plants) Birth...a new life, whatever! Gomer knows she should be happy, but there is so much pain, so much work to be done caring for an infant. Besides that, the birth of this child is over shadowed by the anger of GOD for His people. The birth of Jezreel is  also over shadowed by the overwhelming pent up anger inside of Gomer's heart. Emotions out of control. Gomer focuses on her baby and in the process, she completely loses touch with herself. 

Then Gomer got pregnant again. "Great, just great..." she thinks sarcasticly as she gives birth to a daughter this time. GOD told Hosea to name the child Lo-Ruhamah which translates to "No-Mercy" because GOD has run out of mercy for Israel. HE said there was no more forgiveness for Israel. This was no new thing for Gomer... her emotions were already way outta' whack! She had been emotionally shipwrecked years ago. She knew she deserved no mercy. Why should being a mother make her valuable?  How could she ever feel any greater than what she was, a worthless whore. If I know anything about human nature and the depression that accompanies shame and guilt... this poor lowly woman probably felt that she was involved in a perpetual motion of a downward spiral of breeding more hurt, sadness and depression into the lives of her children.... and look, her low self esteem is only confirmed when GOD saddles her offspring with those GOD forsaken names.

As soon as Gomer had weaned "No-Mercy" she got pregnant again and had another son...GOD told Hosea to name him Lo-Ammi which loosely translates to "Nobody". (Because the BIBLE says that GOD felt that HIS chosen people were now no-bodies to HIM and that HE was no longer their GOD.) Shoo-wee...That this woman did not hurl herself off the nearest mountain top at that point was nothing short of a miracle. I mean how could anyone live with all that shame? I can only imagine that she did not want to live, I imagine that she was a hollow soul. This story is bad enough if it simply ended here, but wait...it gets worse!

Sure GOD is angry with Gomer. He is angry with HIS people. How many times do we read in the Bible that GOD is so disappointed with HIS creation? The story of Noah. The story of Jonah. Sodom & Gomorah... When are we gonna' get it??? HE LOVES US...HE THINKS WE ARE TO DIE FOR!

God had just finished laying the smack down about Israel's sins by comparing HIS people to a promiscuous (Uh, yeah more like a trashy) woman. Hosea could totally relate since Gomer wasn't exaclty a stellar wife. But even after God chose some pretty intense names for Hosea and Gomer's rug-rats that reflected Israel's current state, and then describing how HE was going to remove HIS blessing from Israel, GOD made a dramatic 180 degree turn toward mercy....MERCY! Yeah, it seemed a bit bi-polar, and I must say that I do not totally understand what happened between the end of chapter 1 and the beginning of chapter 3...I mean I read it again, and again, and again...and it is a blur. All I can tell ya' is that GOD's plan goes from one end of the spectrum TOTAL ABANDONMENT to the other PERFECT LOVE.

Did GOD change HIS mind after HE sat back and watched the best of human nature unfold before HIM? Was GOD moved by the human love that blossomed out of Hosea as he showed GOD the potential a mere human has when he displays love by loving the unlovely... Gomer? Obedience. Is that what turned it all around? God says in HIS word..."If you love me, you will obey me." Hosea loved GOD by loving his unfaithful wife Gomer. Whoah...who does that??? Sheesh, by today's standards Hosea would have been toast for loving a skank. His homey's would have dropped him like he was hot!!! They would have been all, "Ya' know what Hosea? That Gomer, she's a ho! You're a nice guy, so why don'tcha kick that skank to the curb...c'mon man, bro's before ho's, right? Yo', dude I got your back!" And perhaps it went down a little bit like that, who knows...

I can only tell you that what Hosea chose to do in the wake of his immense, intense emotional gut wrenching pain, the devastation & disappointment that the unfaithfulness of his prostitue wife turning back to a life of prostitution after already being rescued once from that gutter trash lifestyle surely caused him was incredible by human standards, and it got GOD's attention...Hosea did the unthinkable...the unimaginable by most men's standards. I am sure most spouses would have given up on Gomer long before Hosea did, which is what totally caught GOD's attention, and I believe it is what changed GOD's mind totally, causing HIM to do a 180.

So, yeah...Chat time: Now we are at the beginning of chapter three, and Gomer is in a downward spiral of sin, including adultery, leaving her family and prostitution...AGAIN! Yup! She left the loving arms of her husband,  her babies, and the only family she probably ever knew and went back into prostitution...What the junk?  (psst: by the way GOD did give Hosea a head's up ahead of time that this was gonna' happen, and HE gave Hosea the choice to do it or not.. It appears that God even let Hosea pick Gomer from an all too abundant pack of wild women...Hosea thought Gomer was the pick of the litter, so to speak!)

Anyhoo, get this: Gomer's on the auction block, and from what history tells us about slavery at that time, Gomer prolly' stood naked so that interested buyers could examine the (ahem) "merchandise". As the auctioneer tries to get a starting bid going for this skanky ole' hag, and in her absolute humiliation, she hears a familiar voice and looks up to see Hosea, the husband she's been separated from, walking through the wild crowd. The crowd (you can imagine) was raunchy and cruel, probably slingin' mud and 'maters, rotten food and nasty comments about how haggard Gomer  must have looked...remember she had given up on herself long before this story even began, since she started out in the gutter...when you hit bottom you would think there wouldn't be too far to fall. WRONG! This crowd was likely an angry mob who probably heckled the auctioneer for wasting their time with one in such a worthless state. They might as well have bought her for a penny.

Enter Hosea. Everyone in town knew his story. What a love sick goof ball he must have looked like. The crowd may have become silent as Hosea placed his bid, and sure enough, he was the highest bidder. As he paid for his wife, the gossip about today's events must have spread throughout the entire town like wild fire. He hands the required amount to the acutioneer - he had to pay for her even though he was still legally married to her. Gently, Hosea reaches for her hand to lead her home, again. As she looks into his eyes of love she is once again captivated by the awesomeness of the love that she is painfully aware that she does not deserve. 

Her eyebrows raise to a question, as she looks into Hosea's eyes, but this is no time for words. The love that Hosea has just displayed to Gomer and to everyone else at the auction that day spoke volumes. Actions speak louder than words. Love is a verb.

Talk about a powerful picture this is of a husband's forgiveness - and remember, Hosea is only human. Now imagine the amazing love that GOD displayed when HE asked JESUS to offer HIS redeeming love for unfaithful people like us. I am not asking you to view yourself as unworthy, although we are...but on the flip side, can't you see that if GOD say's that you are worthy, YOU ARE WORTHY! You have great value, when you have to face the demons that want to remind you of your past you just remind them of their future...and when low self esteem and unworthiness try to get you down in the dumps, you just remember who you are. You are the redeemed of the LORD. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so!  SO! I am redeemed, and I know it, I am so loved, how 'bout you? Do you know that yet? I have prayed over this blog, that those of you out there in cyber space who may have stumbled upon this blog would have eyes to see what GOD has done, and ears to hear HIM calling you from HIS heart. I asked HIM to show you the POWER of HIS LOVE!

Blessings,
Shawnie