So, I'm listening to this sermon, and the preacher is telling me that God is yearning to have me come to Him, for me to be close to Him. That His heart is stretched with reaching for me, and faint with love.
Hmm, I think. Well, here's the book of Hosea, where God tells this guy to go take an unfaithful wife so that his life can be a picture of God's faithfulness to Israel. Then he goes on for chapters about how God was gentle and close, and his people wandered off and forgot him. Does he pursue with outstretched hand like a jilted lover? No, his response is initially one of wrathful destruction painted in horrible, violent terms. "You have sinned against me vilely, and I will expose you to shame," he seems to say. Then, he turns and shows compassion to the torn and defiled adulteress. He does not seem to be a God that can't bring himself to fling the unfaithful from him. He's not so enamored as all that. Yet neither is he without compassion and he doesn't pour out wrath forever. He comes with restoration after destruction--it really is a tale of resurrection to a higher life.
I am too afraid of the tearing God, and don't really understand the healing God.
I never used to struggle with these things. I used to be able to blithely say, "Oh, yes, whatever happens it is God's best for us, whatever his reasons, I'm sure He is Good." Now, that is a much harder truth to embrace. But it is no less true.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
as usual, very thought provoking. I check your posts regularly because they really make me think.
I did a lengthy study of Jeremiah once and I was blown away by the heart of God. In the midst of Jeremiah... numerous times... God reaches out to his people, and tells Jeremiah so much as to "tell the people this..." and then when they fail to listen he says, "tell them this, maybe then they will listen." When that fails he reaches out a third time, asks Jeremiah to ask someone the people trusted to tell them the messsage, (paraphrased) "Because maybe then they will hear and listen and turn back to me." He definitely has a heart FOR his people.
Post a Comment