Wind in the Belly, a devotional thought

One of the things that makes Hosea stand out among the prophets is the poignancy and vividness of his imagery. Take, for instance this strange but poignant image from Hosea 12: "Ephraim feeds on the wind; he pursues the east wind all day and multiplies lies and violence" (12:1).

In the context here, "feeding on the wind" is Hosea's way of describing Israel's secular and ultimately futile foreign policy. They've cut a treaty with the ruthless Empire of Assyria (12:1b) and they've brokered trade deals with Egypt (12:1c). These efforts to establish peace and security for themselves are empty at best and idolatrous at worst (Egypt, after all, is the tyrannous nation God delivered them out of; and the Emperor of Assyria is a despotic megalomaniac, strutting around like he's the Lord of Heaven and Earth); trusting in deals with the likes of these guys to prosper and protect them really is like chowing down on a plate of "wind" and expecting that to fill you.

But it's more than great poetry (though it is that), it's also rich food for thought: in what ways I might be "feasting on the wind" in my life? I mean, sure, I haven't made any treaties with any ruthless, idolatrous super powers to protect and prosper me, lately, but at the same time, when you think about "the powers" in the Ephesians 6:12 sense of the term-- that is, describing the spiritual dynamic that's sort of always present in every and any aspect of human society and culture-- technology, political structures, media, economics, entertainment, the world-wide-web-- when you think about "the powers" from that angle, well, let's just say there's a lot of "wind" on the menu in the restaurant that is modern North American Society.

May God would give his people a craving for the good, solid, wholesome food that is life with him, and keep us from consuming all those empty calories.

Learning to Walk, a devotional thought

There's this very tender, very poignant passage in Hosea 11, where the prophet is talking about how much God loves his people (Ephraim, the Northern Kingdom of Israel), and he pictures it as a mother or father "taking their child by the arms" and teaching them how to walk. I remember back when my children were learning to walk, how thrilling that was for me, as their parent: holding them by both hands while they wobbled ahead tentatively, and speaking all sorts of encouragement and affirmation over them, as they took every next step. And God says to Ephraim-- and through Ephraim, to us-- "I was like that with you, as you learned to walk in the spiritual life, holding you lovingly and calling you on in those next teetering steps, and the next, and the next, till you could do it on your own (and even then, I didn't let you go)."

I've been walking for a while now-- so long that I can't really remember a time when I couldn't--but Hosea 11:3 prompts me to remember those times when it was all wobbly and brand new-- life as a Christian-- and every spiritual step was a milestone and a triumph and an adventure all at once.

We must remember how he held us by the hands while we learned to walk, like that, because the problem in Hosea, is that God's People have forgotten. They figure they learned to walk on their own. "You did not realize" God goes on to say in verse 3, "that it was I who healed you." Suddenly, learning to walk has transformed into deep spiritual healing (because, after all, that's what was really happening when you were learning to walk with Jesus: you were being healed, even if you didn't realize it).  May God will keep us all from falling into Ephraim's trap, the trap of thinking I'm a self-taught walker when it comes to spiritual things, instead of acknowledging myself as a God-healed toddler.

Ripe for Idol-Making, a devotional thought

There's this place in Hosea 10 that makes me wonder about the strange connection between prosperity and idolatry. In Hosea 10:1 God brings this indictment against his people: "You're like a spreading vine," he says, "and as your fruit increased, you increased your (idolatrous) altars; as your land prospered, you adorned your (idolatrous) sacred stones."

There is something counter-intuitive in all this. One would think that the more fruitful the land and the more prosperous the people, the more they would worship the God who prospered them; and yet, as far as Hosea is concerned, the exact opposite actually happens.

Idol-making, it seems, flourishes in direct proportion to the flourishing of the people, and the more "fruitful" they are, the more likely they are to fall into idolatry.

There is something very sobering in this for North American Christians. Could it really be that the more cushy our circumstances, the more likely we are to worship (give our time, money, attention, energy and heart-focus to...) things other than God? There's a warning in there, too, I think for "successful churches" (i.e. churches flourishing by human measurements). Could it be that as a church's material prosperity increases, so too does its potential for idol-making?

I'm not sure if these are rhetorical questions or not, but they are certainly the questions Hosea 10 leaves me with.

The Longing of His Heart, a devotional thought

There's this place in Hosea 7:13 where God bears his soul to us, so to speak, showing us the inner longings of his heart with a tenderness and a transparency that should stop us in our tracks. Throughout the chapter, he's been grieving the spiritual rebellion of his people. They've rejected his Way; they're counting on foreign alliances to prosper them rather than trusting in him; and they're worshipping hand-made things instead of enjoying life with him. And then in verse 13, he gives us a little glimpse of his heart for us: "I would redeem them," it says, "but they speak lies against me." The NIV's translation is even more poignant: "I long to redeem them, but they speak lies against me."

God, it turns out, is passionate about redemption, longing to be the redeemer God in our lives. And one of the things that keeps us from experiencing him like this, it seems, is holding to an untrue, inaccurate or self-deceptive view of him. To be redeemed is to be set free from God-lies--the false perceptions of God that we cling to because they're easier, because they're safer, because they're ours to control, or whatever the reason--and in order to be redeemed, Hosea would add, we must let go of these things. To let God be God as God is, our own human limitations on what a god can or can't do or be damned-- this is, perhaps, a scary way to be sometimes; but it is also, I think, a path to the deepest kind of life with him.

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.

Ba'al No Longer, a devotional thought

There's this haunting line in Hosea 2:6 that richly rewards deep meditation and honest reflection.  The Lord's talking about how he intends to restore and renew Israel to relationship with himself, and he says, "In that day, you will call me 'my husband' and you will no longer call me 'my master.'"  I call it haunting, in particular, because the Hebrew word for "master" that's used there is "ba'al," which simply means "lord," or "master," but has gone down in infamy because it's also the name for "Ba'al," the pagan deity who has competed for the hearts of YHWH's people, since the somewhere around the Book of Judges onward.  It gets even more haunting when you notice that the very the next verse uses the word "ba'al" to refer specifically to that foreign god: "I will remove the names of the Ba'als from your lips and their names will no longer be invoked."  

Here's what I think it all means: there is a way of relating to God that is, for lack of a better phrase, "ba'alistic": seeing him as a distant, detached, impersonal "Force to be Reckoned with," who has to be cajoled and manipulated and bargained with if you want to get anything out of him, but who, if he is suitably cajoled and manipulated and bargained with, is beholden to "pony up" and give you what you're asking for.  If and when we relate to God like this--like a sycophantic slave to an imperious Master--we are calling him, in effect, "our Ba'al."  And as far as Hosea is concerned, this is not at all how God is, or how he wants to relate to us, and to come to him as though he were just another "Ba'al," is the most heartbreaking kind of idolatry.  

It's heartbreaking, especially, because relationship he wants with us is one where he loves us and cares for us and communes with us, in the way a spouse loves and cares for and communes with his beloved.  But this kind of relationship just can't thrive if we have a "ba'alistic" view of God, anymore than a marriage can thrive if one partner is always trying to appease the other, or manipulate them into giving them what they want.  

It's important to note that it was Israel herself--the People of God--who had this distorted picture of their relationship with him; they were the ones calling him "ba'ali."  Could it be that it's actually those who have been doing life together with the God longest who are at greatest risk of slipping into this kind of "ba'alism"?  I'm not sure, but at the very least Hosea 2:6 challenges me to take careful stock of my own relationship with God: in the way I relate to him, do I call him "ba'ali" (my master), out of duty and drudgery?  Or do I call him "Ishi" (my betrothed) in delighted abandon? Because it's the later that God desires for us, and its in the later that we really find him.

Not by Might, a devotional thought

In Hosea 1:7, we come across one of the central themes of the Old Testament Scriptures, but also one of the most difficult to hang on to. God’s talking about an Assyrian invasion which is just around the corner for his people. He's just finished saying that, although the Northern Kingdom of Israel will not escape destruction, he will have mercy on Judah (the Southern Kingdom). Then in verse 1:7 comes the stop-you-dead-in-your-tracks qualifier: Judah's deliverance will not come about "by the bow, nor by the sword, nor by battle, nor by horses, nor by horsemen" (i.e. not by any of the worldly ways you'd expect deliverance to come); rather it will come from the Lord their God, and him alone.

I call it a stop you dead in your tracks verse, because it sort of forces me to think about what I'm trusting in for "deliverance," however I happen to define deliverance in the given moment. Am I looking to the very same things everyone around me is looking to? (scientific know-how, maybe? performance excellence, perhaps? financial security? the latest ministry product guaranteed to revolutionize your church? You name it.) Or am I trusting in, and waiting on, especially, and before anything else, the Lord my God?

I think this question needs regular revisiting, because the tendency to start looking for a better bow, a sharper sword, a faster horse, or what have you, is very real; it's like a gravitational pull in the Christian life. Hosea 1:7 is God's urgent call to defy gravity, to resist the allure of better-bow-building, and to depend wholly on him. Like it says in another place, "Not by might, not by power, but by the Spirit of God."