Not to digress too much, but the post title is inspired by my current obsession with "Friends." I was never really allowed to watch it when I was younger, which was probably a good thing. Now that I'm a grown-up, I find it so funny. And laughing is like a drug that I cannot ever get enough of...
Anyway,
I've never really reflected on the book of Hosea before, mostly because I don't understand it and it makes me uncomfortable. Honestly, the whole story of Hosea and Gomer seems so sick and twisted and cruel. But I think some part of me connected to Hosea today. The notion that God often asks us to do things that we don't understand and asks us to do things that are seemingly, or blatantly, outside the status quo is kind of hitting me in the face right now. Not that I'm doing anything in particular that speaks to this. I ain't speakin' to no burning bush outside my house and I'm not about to marry a male prostitute, at least God hasn't communicated that to me....yet. But in any case, it's good to be reminded that just because things are hard/weird, or doesn't seem to be making a lot of sense and people are not necessarily jumping on your bandwagon and advising you to get off it--it doesn't mean that it's outside of God's will. A wise man, by the name of Mark Twain once said, "Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect."
In Hosea's case, God told him to marry a prostitute, in order to demonstrate His active pursuit of the wayward and adulterous Israel and how He eventually wins them over (in their surrender) because of His unfailing and merciful love.
I asked myself, what in the hell do you suppose people around Hosea thought about this little ordeal. Hosea, being a prophet of God, finds himself a woman on the street who sells her body for sex and marries her! I can't even imagine how that would play out today! What did people, that Hosea was trying to reach, think about that? More profoundly, what was Hosea thinking/feeling through all of this? Hosea, being a mere human being, might've wondered, 'why me?' Maybe I'm psychoanalyzing this too much, but I believe that it's in the Bible for a reason and those reasons, I believe, are in part --but definitely not limited to--- the usual overstated explanations (i.e revealing God's true nature, seeing ourselves reflected in Israel's disloyalty and unfaithfulness, etc). What if we siphoned out a sense of reality from all this? Old testament characters might be ancient, but that doesn't make them less human than we are now.
As I continue to think about Hosea, I think about the realities of living a life with the intention of following Jesus. The pursuit of God, in our feeble attempts to stay true to what He is asking us to do, which SO goes against the grain of our selfish nature, will cause a lot of physical, emotional and mental tension. And this tension, this wrestling that can lead us to a degree of distress and agony--should we choose to engage the hard realities of life--is us wrestling with our own human limitations. Limitations can be our selfishness, or underlying issues that stem from our past experiences, which can often disrupt the happy, bubbly world we desire to live in.
So with all that to say, maybe Hosea's ordeal was not just for Israel to learn from. Maybe Hosea had to learn a lot about himself, too.
Whatever it is that we find ourselves wrestling with, it's good to remember that God has our backs. And that He's not allowing us to go through hard situations just for the "fun of it." He's always purposeful. And through each hard thing that we endure--fiery trials, dark nights of the soul, a season of drought, etc-- He teaches us, not just about Him, but about US and He makes us a better version of ourselves. He makes us more Jesus-like.
And that...was a lot of self-preaching.
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