The Story

The inspiration for this blog comes from a simple story that speaks more to my life every time I think about it, and that is the Biblical account of Hosea and Gomer. Hosea is not exactly the most popular book by any means, but it has made its way to one of my favorites because it takes an appalling, shameful situation, and turns it into a story of redemption, and unconditional love.

In a nut shell, God tells the prophet Hosea of all things, to go and find for himself a wife. Sounds great, right? Maybe, but only until God also reveals that this wife must specifically be a “wife of harlotry” -in other words, a prostitute. Wait, WHAT? What man wants a wife who prostitutes herself?

Well, regardless of the strange situation, Hosea does what He was told, and marries a lady by the name of Gomer. Over the course of time, they have three children, but sadly not long after this, we see that she has returned to her old ways, and is unfaithful to Hosea. But not only is she unfaithful, she completely leaves him in the dust with the kids.

But the beauty of the story is this: Hosea did not anger himself over the situation, but in his obedience to God took a route that very few of us would ever take: he went after her. Imagine all the places throughout the city he would have to go to in order to find her, all the death, and sadness. But for love, he pushes through, and finally finds her. When he does, we are told that Hosea despite having a certain ownership of her as her husband, still pays a price to bring her home. There is forgiveness, there is love, and there is freedom.

The meaning of this story in my life is two-fold. First of all, it is clear that all of us in our own way have been like Gomer. We have built such a comfortable life around our sin, that we insist on returning to it constantly, even though it is in all reality repulsive, and extremely scandalous. We are so caught up with it that it takes someone with the audacity of Hosea to bring us back to sanity.

Thankfully, there actually is someone who braved the scars of nails, and the death of a cross so that I can come back to the same forgiveness, love, and freedom. My name is not Gomer, but in a sense you can call me Gomer because Jesus has marvelously changed everything in my life that once denied His authority.

The second reason is this: now that I have been changed, I realize that there is still a huge need for all the Gomers who have not quite made it. The only thing I can do now that I have been saved, is to go back and put all my efforts into bringing them home. I want them to know that we are undeserving of His goodness, but that He extends it anyways. That we cannot find life again, unless He looks for us where we are, which He actually did by becoming human. But above all, that we are not His until we have been bought with a price, but the price was paid in full a couple thousand years ago, making the biggest statement history has ever seen. Do you believe? Can you call yourself a Gomer?

Isaiah 53:2-5, says,”He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces, he was despised, and we held him in low esteem. Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.”

His question for you would be this: Have you found healing yet?