Hosea listed several tribes of Israel and recited what they did that violated God’s principles and directives. The result was judgment, revealed here in natural calamity like crop failure or defeat in warfare. Common response in people suffering to that degree is to do something religious, like engaging prayer and imposing stern self-made traditions, even flagellation, so that by appeasing God with: (a) – doing what they believe God wants, God will reward them. So they will: (b) – get from God what they want. There is some logic for the pattern, even if the result is uneven at best. There is no surety that all will go well because we do the right things. God is more interested in relationships with us than mankind’s sacrifices of any kind, even sacrifice of human time in meditation. The writer put it well: Though he slay me, yet will I trust him. God does not give us all we want. To do so would send wrong signals. God is not to be appeased, but loved. Why would we love God? The answer is, because God loves us. And, in the context of that love, God rescues us. God wants those who want to be with him. He is a distant lover to those who keep him at their distance. Persons who seek will discover they love God who loves. God’s nature is love, a vital point often made in these Pages. God’s friends also love, and live love.
The emphasis of Scripture to gain peace and provision from God is to hold right relationship with God. That comes by seeking God. If we seek him, God permits us to find him. Discovering God the Father through Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit, persons discover lasting peace, forgiveness, love, meaning, order, and everlasting life. It is worth the effort to go to the end of that rainbow.
The ‘49ers seeking gold in California gave up home and family and went in search of wealth. They were told that there was little hope for them, but the dream was great enough to cause them to go anyway. Men who gained wealth directly from gold, were fewer than one percent of those who went for the prize. The odds were pitiful. The ones who got rich were ones who served the men who sought riches – the suppliers, the town merchants, the transportation providers. Levi Strauss may have out-riched them all making denim pants, levis for the miners.
What if, with similar zeal and risk, we were to seek God? What would happen if instead of seeking elusive gold by which, if found, we might improve the quality of our homes, food, life – we were to seek one who can make life worth living, even worth dying for? What if, in a turn of values, we decided that improving the inner person designed for hope perception, we mined the resources that would give us what we truly desire? Do we believe that wealth will give us what we ultimately hope for? Why do many who become wealthy have so much trouble finding what they say they want? They seek for it, as Solomon did, in various pursuits, both legitimate and illegitimate. In the end all is vanity (vapor). The matter can’t be shifted to others. What of ourselves? Do we really seek God? We can seek as did the Apostles, persons as human as we are, suggest that we should. If I am not seeking, Hosea’s text frightens me. Persons desiring to be godly in all that they are, must always be seekers after God. He permits us to find him. That’s good, and continuing. He is always present. He does not abandon his creation even if the creation wanders away from him. If wandering, we find the playing field has changed, and the infractions (out of bounds activity) inherit penalty. We want to go beyond creative self-presence to redemptive presence. In resolution we qualify for eternal presence. All that may seem ephemeral to the reader here. Too many have found its reality to doubt it. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020