Between the Two Ponds
One passage. One idea. A few quiet minutes. Short devotional readings for people being formed by grace, written from a small chair beside still water in Falcon, Colorado.
Pull one up. Read slowly. There is no hurry here.
Though, and Not After
It is one thing to love someone who comes crawling back and asks for forgiveness.
"Go again, love a woman who is loved by another man and is an adulteress, even as the Lord loves the children of Israel." (Hosea 3:1)
It is one thing to forgive someone who comes crawling back and asks for it. It is another thing entirely to get up and go find them, to make the first move toward the very person who did the wounding, to walk out the door after someone who left and is not sorry and is at this moment in another man's house. Everything in us protests. It is not my fault. I stayed. I did not leave.
And God says, go again.
There is a way to tell who is the more spiritual person in a broken relationship, and it is not who is right. It is who, in humility, moves first toward reconciliation, for that is the one who sees more worth in the relationship than in the verdict. That is Jesus exactly. He was never once wrong in an argument in his life, and he was always the first one down the road. He does not stand at the far end of your repentance with his arms crossed, waiting for you to complete it. He comes to meet you while you are still a long way off.
Watch the small word in the verse. Love her, God says, as I love Israel, though they turn to other gods. Not after they turn back. Though they are still turning away. At this point in the story Gomer has done nothing to earn a second look. There is no scene where she comes to her senses first. Grace moves before the change, not after it.
So you do not have to fix it before you come. You do not have to arrive sorry enough. Turn toward him even now, in mid-flight, and you will find he was already coming toward you.
Nobody Repents of Dessert
It seems like a strange detail to put in a verse about spiritual adultery, and the first time it catches you it almost sounds funny. Is God suddenly against baked goods?
"Go again, love a woman who is loved by another man and is an adulteress, even as the Lord loves the children of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love cakes of raisins." (Hosea 3:1)
Raisin cakes. It is a strange thing to find in a verse about spiritual adultery, and the first time you notice it, it almost sounds like a joke. But in that world the raisin cake was the imported thing, the expensive thing, the delicacy you set out so the neighbors would know you were doing well. It was the newest thing on the table, turned so it could be seen. And God places it in the same breath as turning to other gods, and he does it on purpose.
We want our idols to be dramatic, a carved thing on a shelf, something plainly wicked we would never touch. God says no. The thing that pulls a heart away from him is very often not evil at all. It is nice. It is a small luxury, a signal, a raisin cake. And that is exactly what makes it dangerous, because nobody repents of dessert.
The idol is almost never the object itself. It is the story the object tells you about yourself, the quiet sentence about the kind of person who can afford it. That sentence does not feel like worship. That is precisely how you know it is. The worship you can name, you can resist. The worship you have mistaken for taste runs your life unopposed.
And here is the terrible mercy in the verse. Knowing exactly what she left him for, knowing it was raisin cakes, God says go again, and love her. He does not wait for the idol to look impressive enough to forgive. So do not wait either. Name the nice thing you would never have called an idol, and bring it to him before it quietly finishes taking your heart.