Recently, Hosea has caught my attention. It's a small, 14 chaptered book in the Bible... all about God's love story. In a CD recording of one of Donald Miller's (ie author of Blue Like Jazz) sermons, he talks about the balconey scene in Shakespere's
Romeo and Juliet. He claims that it is an analogy to salvation. It seems pretty far fetched, but he supports his point amazingly well. For example, Juliet says to Romeo, "Deny thy father and refuse thy name." Guess what, Jesus said the same thing in Matthew 10: "Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me." When Jesus says it, though, we think him harsh... but Juliet's plea is romantic, spawned from an all-consuming, jealous passion. It's all about context... and we've taken God out of the love story. We try to bind him by facts and theology, all the while forgetting the beautiful love with which we are captivated. We've taken God out of the love story, but Hosea puts him back in.
Today I started something new. I've been doing daily devotionals for about four years now, and for the first time, I'm not doing them with a guide book. I've read devotional Bible's, Our Daily Bread, devotional booklets... but I've never just spent time in personal reflection in the scripture. All those things were good for me where I was, but I want to step out into this new thing. I'm doing it because I want to study Hosea. The story is a hardcore love story ripe with betrayal, passion, pain, and forgiveness.
This is all to say that I will be writing a lot about Hosea... probably. I mean, it is my own devotional time, so we'll see how much I feel up to sharing. ;)
