PAIN OF GOD

Hosea 11

When we sin, we talk a lot about hanging Jesus back on the cross, but do we ever really stop and consider the pains that we cause God? Our measure of love for God is inversely proportional to our love for the world. Some of us practically worship the world, consciously or not, in our attempts to do what we believe needs to be first in priority. I am definitely guilty of doing such things. Let us pause and think about how God feels.

In the book of Hosea, we have a man who has to take up a prostitute as his wife and have children who are just as bad if not worse than their mother to him. One might wonder how that feels. It's hard to, having not experienced marriage first-hand. Maybe this: your favourite sister and you finally go steady but in the weeks to come, you find her going to church less and spending less time with you as well. The truth comes out that she is seeing someone else outside the church. How does that hit you? Pretty hard, I would think.

Similarly, God has this bunch of people who he raised from young or who have pledged their marriage and faithfulness to him yet go around denying that exact pledge of love pretty much every day of their lives, only to go back to him every now and then to be provided for. He did so much for these people and they treat him like this, like a disposable object useful only when they need it. If I were God, I think I'd be pretty pissed.

Yet the thing about God is that he loves. A lot. More than you can think. And that's why he doesn't just destroy the whole bunch of us. He gives us chances and chances and more chances to repent. Even when he does punish us, he doesn't wipe us out but rejoices when we choose to repent. Here you have a God who, above his intense hatred for sin, loves us enough to accept us even though we have been with it. It's just like saying how you'd accept your favourite sister back after all that she had done, having an impure relationship with someone outside the church while having 'gone steady' with you.

Luke 15 tells of the parable of the prodigal son. The Father was so overjoyed about his son's returned that he didn't mind the fact that the boy had pretty much cursed him to death, squandered off his inheritance and left the house without even so much as a goodbye. God is like that. No matter how much we sin, when we wake up and decide to return, he is always there for us. That said, sinning is not justified. No, it is merely that in our failed nature as human beings, when we sin after trying hard not to, we are allowed to be forgiven. The monk Rasputin lived his life in the deepest of sins because he believed the more sin he had, the more salvation he would receive. What he did not understand was repentance. Like balm to a wound, repentance is the only thing that can potentially mend our relationship with God.

Today, let us not be immersed in our sin but remember the pain that God went through in giving us new life and hate the sin that entraps us.