[Natural Beauty, 2009, DCJohanson]
Hosea 3:1 Then the LORD said to me, "Go again, love a woman who is loved by a lover and is committing adultery, just like the love of the LORD for the children of Israel, who look to other gods and love the raisin cakes of the pagans."
There is a sculpture in Vigeland Sculpture Park, Oslo, Norway which perfectly embodies the thoughts that occurred to me today. I could not find a photo of it... it is the one which has the lone woman, trapped in the coils of a sleeping serpent, bound fast by its hold on her until the time when it awakens and consumes her.
This image from my friend Dave Johanson is a stylized photo which can be seen in a similar light. The ferns in which the woman is immersed and her posture and gesture can be taken as despair. She is being sucked into the binding tentacles which grip her body... she struggles but cannot escape... she knows it is hopeless. The "things" which God designed for good have been transformed into evil... in their perversion they ensnare and feed on their prey. Such is the character of compulsive sin.
Hosea's life calling was not an easy one... He was set aside by God to experience just a taste of what God Himself goes through with His people. How miserable it must have been. Hosea was given a wife to marry and to love. His heart was to bind to her. They had children together. There was a movement of his spirit toward hers. Yet, from the beginning he knew that she was ensnared by sin. There was a fundamental weakness in her... a fatal defect. She lusted after pleasure... after other men... she was a harlot by inclination if not by profession. She sinned because she wanted to sin. It was not external circumstances... the pressures of providing for her children... the absence of a loving and generous husband... that moved her. It was the clinging tentacles, the sucking, crushing grip of obsession that kept her eyes wandering and her feet chasing after the flesh.
Hosea knew all this going in, just as God knows the wandering heart of His bride, His Church. Hosea experienced the gut wrenching jealousy... the shameful rejection... the very, very personal and intimate pain that goes along with this type of rejection. She longed for something that was not him! She despised beauty, righteousness, honesty, integrity, constancy, and faithfulness. She interpreted patient loving kindness as weakness and despised it. How clearly she embodies and portrays us.
Yet, Hosea also is given the task of loving her back to himself. The love that God gives him to express to her is a type of the self-sacrificing power with which He draws us, His wandering Bride, back to Himself. His power withers the power of sin... the radiance of His person shrinks the voluptuous foliage that requires the dark and damp jungle to support its vigor.
God's love is greater than our sin... it is the scalpel which gently scrapes away the leeches draining our life. God is the perfect Husband because He loves us even when we don't love Him.
My heart goes out to my brother Hosea. But what a wonder God accomplished in him... and, in retrospect, what a privilege he was given. May we be as faithful... and even more, may our lives be used by God to such glorious ends... though I tremble at the idea of what that might entail.

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