The tangled love story of Hosea and Gomer portrays God’s passionate love for His people. It begins with Hosea receiving the unusual instruction from God to take a wife – a harlot. Sounds absurd I know, but it has a beautiful purpose.
So the prophet and the prostitute enter into holy matrimony and he gives the fallen lady his name. They have three offspring with symbolic and very significant names which meant; God Scatters, No Mercy, and Not My People. (I’m sure they had nicknames).
Gomer lived up to her reputation and continued her love affair with the world. Despite her bridegroom’s patient pleas, her bitter betrayal took her far from home and she refused to return. The Lord spoke to Hosea and told him to take back the wife he couldn’t stop loving. And the heartbroken Hosea found her battered by life, sold out by her lover to a slave auction.
He adored her although she abandoned him with a broken vow. And so he paid a price for his bride.
When we turn our back on God, He doesn’t wait for us to come back – He pursues us and finds us after we’re jilted by the world. It grieves Him to see us wander away, sadly that can happen while sitting in a pew. Hosea’s beautiful love story speaks to the church today of His extravagant forgiveness despite her faithlessness.
This is the scandal of God’s undying love and dying love that paid a blood price to make us His own. Fourteen chapters in the book of Hosea, actually sixty-six books in the Bible tells your love story – and mine. No matter how unfaithful we have been we can find redeeming arms to cover us and hold us close.
It’s never too late to begin again – to believe again.
Let us press on to acknowledge the Lord. As surely as the sun rises He will appear. He will come to us like the winter rains, like the spring rains that water the earth. Hosea 6:3
Verna
And I was blessed. This is beautiful Verna.