On Chasing and Waiting and Which is Which, a Devotional Thought

There's this subtle but fascinating linguistic parallel between Hosea 6:3, in the Old Testament, and James 5:7 in the New. In Hosea, the prophet exhorts his people to "acknowledge the Lord and press on to know him, because he will come to us like the winter rains and the spring rains." This line finds a haunting echo in the James passage, where James says, "Be patient and wait for the Lord's coming; Just like a farmer plants his crops and then waits for the autumn rain and the spring rain, so too we should wait, for the Lord is coming."

This verbal parallel gets even more interesting when you look up the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures. In the LXX version of Hosea 6:3, the Greek words for "winter and spring rains" are the exact same words as James uses in 5:7 (proimos kai opsimos). What's fascinating about this, though, is that James is talking about patiently waiting for the Lord, and Hosea's talking about earnestly, actively pursuing him. Yet in both cases the outcome is exactly the same: he comes to us like the spring rain and the winter rain.

This is more than just a curious piece of Bible Trivia. It actually speaks to one of the deep paradoxes of the spiritual life: sometimes the best way to wait for the Lord is to chase hard after him with all we've got, and sometimes the best way to chase after the Lord is to wait patiently for him to come to us.

The obvious question all this raises is: "Which is which, today?" In other words: does my "waiting for the Lord" need to look more like Hosea's earnest pursuit of him? Or does my "pursuit of God" need to look more like James' patient farmer watching the clouds pile up in the sky and waiting for them to arrive? Knowing which we are called to be in this given moment-- a Jamesesque Hosea or a Hosean James--takes careful discernment and deep wisdom; but both James and Hosea would agree, I think, that He comes most surely to those who have learned to wait with perfect restfulness as they pursue him with earnest longing.