The Story of Hosea and Gomer
MERRY MONDAY: BY PARRIS BAILEY-
It’s hard to read the book of Hosea and not be moved at Hosea’s love toward His Gomer. He was instructed to take “a wife from the harlots”. What amazes me about Hosea is that he loved her. He didn’t question God as to why this is happening to him but was told “This is what Israel has been to God.” Sometimes our tragedy opens a door to a new spiritual truth. This is how his grief became his gospel. Hosea saw his suffering as a symbol of God’s redemptive grace-that one day Christ would come redeem the harlots of the world.
When I think about my life I realize that God allures all of us to come to him. In Hosea it says, “Therefore, behold, I will allure her, bring her into the wilderness and speak kindly to her. Then I will give her her vineyards from there, and the valley of Achor as a door of hope and she will sing there as in the days of her youth, as in the day when she came up from the land of Egypt. It will come about in that day,” declares the LORD, “That you will call Me Ishi and will no longer call Me Baali. Hosea went and bought her back from slavery when her harlotry and idolatry had gotten her there. I have to ask myself how many times does God woo the unbeliever and even me when I get off the track. He takes us out of the valley of trouble and places us into the door of hope. If we look around this vast world, when I look up at the stars at night, or His vast oceans, rivers and lakes and see the abundance of life. All these things point to a redeeming God that never stops seeking us. We never even had the ability to save ourself. Gomer’s name meant completion. She symbolized the filling up of Israel’s sin and God was saying “you have sowed to the wind and will reap the whirlwind”. Some of you reading this might have walked close to the Lord at one time, but something happened; you allowed other things to come between you and him. It seemed that you took your eyes off of him for only a moment, but that moment turned into an hour, and the hour into days, weeks, months, perhaps even years. You used to hear his voice calling you back, but now all you hear is silence. You confess your sins, but you feel no release and you worry that somehow you’ve wandered so far away, or done something so terribly wrong. No matter what you might have done, no matter how long it’s been since you walked with the Lord, no matter how far you may have wandered from His presence, no matter what you may have said to Him in your anger, frustration, or disappointment, the truth is that God has never stopped loving you, and he will never give up on you. It’s time to come home.