Today I am enjoying the silence. The weather has turned and the cool fall air fills my home. When I woke up this morning it was actually cold in my room!
For a change, I am content this morning with silence and thought. No radio or television to clog my thoughts and infect my mind with someone else’s opinion or perspective.
I have been spending time in Hosea. This book was written to an unfaithful
Gomer sold herself for things
For their mother is a shameless prostitute and became pregnant in a shameful way. She said, ‘I’ll run after other lovers and sell myself to them for food and drink, for clothing of wool and linen, and for olive oil.’ Hosea 2:5 (New Living Translation)
What effect is this having on your life? Are you chasing after things right now? Are you grasping and clawing trying to have “the good life” even in the midst of our current economic meltdown? Are you attempting to hold on to these things that you have worked so very hard for, sacrificed yourself for?
How frustrated are you with your current lot in life? Do you find that you are riding the hamster wheel every day, running and running and never getting ahead? Are you tired of the struggle and wish only for a rest from the never ending storms of fear and doubt that assail you?
There have been times I have been right there. It is now many years since I decided “enough!” and began realizing it was all not worth it. Very much like God did with Gomer He did with me.
“But I will fence her in with thornbushes. I will block the road to make her lose her way. When she runs after her lovers, she won’t be able to catch up with them. She will search for them but not find them. Then she will think, ‘I might as well return to my husband because I was better off with him than I am now.’ She doesn’t realize that it was I who gave her everything she has—the grain, the wine, the olive oil. Even the gold and silver she used in worshiping the god Baal were gifts from me! Hosea 2:6-8
I was not unfaithful to my husband; I was unfaithful to my God. Over a period of years I had traded the riches of my closeness with Him for pursuit of the stuff of life. Like many of you (I suppose) it happened without my realizing it and before long I was sucked in and performing as a harlot of the world and its system (Hosea 2:9-13).
My faithful God, who loves me more than I can ever understand or comprehend, put a stop to my harlotry. All the things I had put such confidence in suddenly went away. We experienced setbacks that were too bizarre to be fiction and there was real danger of losing it all. No matter what we tried we did not succeed and all that preserved us was the grace of God in our friends and our church. (continues tomorrow)